The ‘Rhubarb Triangle’ artist re-creating colourful characters

Coast-based Lynne is painting social history

By Lynne Arnison

I am a visual artist living and working in Scarborough. I hail from Morley where my craving for creativity began as a small child, daubing paint on the back of offcuts of wallpaper.

The need to paint and draw has stayed with me throughout school, art college, working full-time as a civil servant and having two children.

I have an empathy with LS Lowry who juggled being a rent man, looking after his bed-ridden mother and stealing hours to pursu e his passion.

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to be an artist-inresidence at Burton Agnes Hall (the Elizabethan manor house between Bridlington and Driffield) for several years up to 2016. This really helped me to grow and find my artis tic identity.

I look for inspiration from social documentary taking subject matter from Morley (I was born in the ‘Rhubarb Triangle’) and from Leeds and Scarborough.

The former being gritty northern industrial towns, full of character and steeped in the working-class history which underpinned their prosperity.

I moved to Scarborough in 1992. My curiosity for social history continued, particularly the link with people from the industrial north seeking fun and sun in Scarborough over the past century.

I use photographs from my own records or borrowed (with permission) as source-material, for most of my work.

I feel these forgotten faces from the past need recognition just as much as the society figures you see in portrait galleries and municipal buildings.

Some of the artwork in my last exhibition at The Dorothy Rowan Gallery in Scarborough concentrated on these people and places which have now changed.

I also created illustrated reimagined postcards using original ‘saucy seaside’ cards and vintage pre-decimalisation stamps. These are displayed in floating frames to enable the viewer to see my postcard message and illustration as well as the original postcard picture on the reverse.

I work as a volunteer in the Stephen Joseph theatre shop where I sell some of my work. I have been an avid theatre-goer for years so actors and writers have been another source of inspiration, one of them being Sir A lan Ayckbourn.

I confess to being obsessed with wallpaper, particularly vintage, so I have used this as a backdrop to many of my portraits.