Calderdale (2025)

Original media: Inks, gouache, acrylics, watercolour, coloured pencil, gold leaf and gold thread.

This is the largest painting I’ve ever done! But there was an awful lot to fit in. This painting of Calderdale was a commission from Bankfield Museum following my exhibition ‘Engineers & Chocolatiers’ for ‘Culturedale’, in 2024. The wish list was extensive: The 5 big towns of Calderdale, a nod towards the infrastructure (rail, river, canal) and the industries that shaped it. Essentially, everything in the 2024 exhibition in one painting.
I did my best and what I’ve tried to create is a painting that keeps you looking. I’ve hidden things in tiles that I couldn’t make part of the main composition. I know there will be important things that I’ve missed. We all have our own landmarks and particular lexicon of what makes Calderdale Calderdale.

See if you can find: Todmorden, Hebden Bridge, Sowerby Bridge, Halifax, Brighouse (but no prizes there). Then Heptonstall, Gibson Mill, Old Town Mill, Oats Royd Mill, Shibden Hall, Bankfield Museum, All Souls Church, Wainhouse Tower, Dean Clough, Crossley Heath, The Piece Hall, The chocolate factory (with Quality Street getting a special mention). The original Halifax head office building, based on the front of a ship. Halifax Minster, Square Chapel and Square Church tower. The Smith Art gallery in Brighouse, along with the old flour mill, and a nod towards the Greenway towpath walk.

The canal and the railway bridges are the lines that tie everything together, though in reality they switch about a fork in a way that would have made the painting too complicated.

In the bottom third are all the moorland birds, along with flocks of lapwings, swifts and rooks that gather there. I’ve put in a little something for Cragg Vale, Rishworth School, Ripponden, and then West Vale, Elland and Greetland as they all merge together. Underscored with the bluebell woods that run from Elland to Copley.

In the tiles you can find the silver fish sculptures from Todmorden, coins for the Cragg Vale coiners, stone decorations from the beautiful lost house of New Cragg Hall (along with the gate house, which remains). There’s a waterwheel from when the mills were small and utilised the power of the water and the steep sided valley. There are wheels from industrial looms when steam was introduced and all the mills moved to the valley bottom. Oak leaves for Edward Akroyd, Gentleman Jack’s top hat, hops from the local breweries, the stained glass creatures from Shibden Hall. An ‘H’ for Harveys, Percy Shaw’s Cat’s Eyes, some Art Nouveau silver from Charles Horner, the renowned Halifax silversmith (this was my son Robin’s idea as he’s a Charles Horner fan). There’s a tile for cotton, for wool and for silk (Brighouse being a centre for silk spinning at one time).
There may be things that even I’ve forgotten are in there!

I hope you have fun looking.

Available as a signed limited edition print, hand-finished with gold leaf and gold thread. All prints are mounted and can be posted, unless purchased framed.