A portrait of the artist: Interview with Calderdale painter Roger Davies
Welcome to Calderdale opens today at the Smith Art Gallery in Brighouse
Hello and welcome to our last pre-Christmas edition of The Calderdale Lead.
I hope you’re all feeling festive as the big day approaches and you’re looking forward to downtime with family.
Today’s long read is an interview with artist Roger Davies, whose latest show - Welcome to Calderdale - opens today at the Smith Art Gallery in Brighouse.
I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek of the show yesterday and sat down with Roger to find out all about his striking style and his love of colour.
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‘I admire Lowry but he wasn’t interested in colour’
The street scenes of West Yorkshire artist Roger Davies feel familiar, even if you know you’ve never seen them before.
I must confess that until I was putting together the midweek Culture Guide, I had never heard of Roger, let alone seen his work.
But walking around the Smith Art Gallery in Brighouse, where his largest show to date will open today, I feel like I’ve seen it all before.
The places he paints are, of course, familiar—scenes of shops and pubs and restaurants and venues across Brighouse, Halifax and Hebden Bridge.
But there’s also something about the style that feels like they’ve been in my mind for years.
There’s a hint of LS Lowry about Roger’s depictions of places although as he’s keen to point out, he and Salford’s greatest painter also share a few differences.
He said: “I mention LS Lowry just because I've always liked his work, and I get told quite a lot by people that my pictures remind them of him. And I think what they mean is I’ve got this kind of urban space, a street scene, mostly, or something else, but the pictures I make are populated with figures, you see. And I think that's what they mean.
“Lowry, as much as I admire him, he wasn't really interested in colour. He was more interested in composition and tone, and that's what I've learned a lot about from looking at his pictures. And I just mentioned him because I like his work a lot, and I've learned a lot through looking at it.”
There’s certainly colour in Roger’s pieces. His vivid purple night sky, the flourescent yellow for the stars bring forth memories of another great artist - Vincent Van Gogh, another influence.
Roger trained as an artist, first at the famed Batley School of Art and Design before spending three years studying Fine Art (Drawing & Painting) at the Duncan Of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee.
He also studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in America for three months in 1999 after winning the Arthur C Lowe Travel Scholarship. Not bad for a Brighouse boy eh?
One thing that you will notice from the figures depicted in Roger’s paintings is that none of them have eyes or a mouth. In fact, all the figures are painted either from behind, from the side or through silhouettes in windows.
Roger says it’s because he can’t draw full frontal facial features. Despite the lack of expression on his characters faces, they are still so expressive.
He said: “So if I'm doing something that's pushing me to my limits and my capabilities, I have to work up to that point. So I can't really go beyond it. So that's what that is there.
“I'm solving the problem of I can't do the full face thing, so I don't do it. I do the figures from the side or just not from the front.”
He adds that he has to have people in his pictures because without them, well, the scenes wouldn’t be true.
“I see it in some exhibitions and someone will have made a painting of or a drawing or a picture or whatever of a place and I don't know, it could be for instance off the top of my head, Huddersfield train station. What is it now? St. George's Square. Well there's usually people about but in this particular painting they haven't put any figures.
“And I'm like well it's a nice picture. They've done the building really well and I like the painting but where are all the figures? What's happened? Where have they gone? Has something happened? I need to put people in my pictures because that would happen. They wouldn't be worth looking at if there were no figures in them.
“They'd just be empty pictures.”
The exhibition at the Smith Art Gallery - which runs until next June - is the culmination of the last 16 months’ work.
Roger had originally wanted far longer to create the pieces but, having pitched the ideas to Calderdale Museums, they were keen for the exhibition to be sooner.
He said: “I did it all in about 14 or 16 months. I wanted about three years to be able to make the work, because I thought I'd need it. But I was told that the museum service was so keen on my proposal that I put to them that they wanted to do it sooner rather than later.
“So I did it, and, well, the future's uncertain in many ways. But that doesn't frighten me. I'm willing to give it a go and here we are.
“It’s been exhausting. Some of the pictures are much larger than the ones I’m used to creating so that was a challenge. I’m looking forward to some time off over Christmas and then get ready for the new year.”
As part of the exhibition, Roger will host a series of events and workshops. Some of these will be based around his other love - music - while others will be encouraging people young and old to give art a try.
Roger is a frequent visitor to schools where he inspires children to be artistic, express some freedom and generally have a ball whilst creating something.
He said: “Children's approach to art is just fantastic to see. Kids' drawings are just brilliant - they don't care about whether things look right or wrong.
“I say look the only rules that you have to follow here in the art class when I'm around is the rules that you want to make for yourself.
“I'll visit a school and we'll pick a subject that is familiar to the kids and we'll say right I'm going to give you some charcoal and paints and I'm going to show you some of my work and then you can have a go at making your own pictures in kind of my style if you want.
“But you know it's going to be a location there's going to be people moving round the weather might be winter, summer, night time you know the figures are probably doing something and they have a lovely time, they really do make some great work and they ask some really good questions.”
It’s clear from our chat that Roger shares the enthusiasm of his younger charges when it comes to his own work. His passion for his craft is strong and he admits he’s already thinking about what comes next.
“I just know that for me personally there is this compulsion, there's this interest, there's this desire to do it and I've always been interested in it since I was a kid. If there's something that I like in the world I always like to have a go at it.
“And even if someone thinks that I'm very good at it or not I'll still do it anyway just because there's some kind of positivity to be derived from trying something and engaging with it and engaging with the process where you don't know what the outcome is going to be but there's something about trying to do it.”
Welcome to Calderdale - A Celebration of the Borough is at the Smith Art Gallery in Brighouse from today until June 2025. For more information click here.
Well, I hope you enjoyed my chat with Roger and I really do urge you to go and check out the exhibition because his paintings certainly brought a smile to my face when I wandered the gallery hall.
Just to let you know there won’t be a Wednesday edition this week - it’s Christmas Day after all! - but we’ll be back on Saturday with the next issue.
Until then, have a lovely Christmas and best wishes!
Andrew