Artist Story: William Heard

Please give a brief introduction to yourself and your artistic practice

As a child I was always drawing and making things. School was a place that encouraged me, my earliest memories being of making things with wood, knitting, weaving and making Airfix plastic models. One of my very early memories, before I even started school, was buying what seemed like a giant sheet of paper with the lad who lived next door and drawing a huge battle scene on it between us. Another early memory was my grandmother asking me if I wanted to see a dead body. But that’s another story!

Later, the school’s careers advice teacher said it wasn’t possible to be an artist. I applied for a place on an engineering course at the local technical college and during a meeting with the course leader, he asked what my interests were and subsequently arranged for me to meet the arts course tutor who encouraged me to switch courses.

My dad was a blacksmith and farrier at Ellington Colliery working underground. Everything in the house had a picture of a horse on it, the pictures on the wall were horses, the poker for the fire, the cups, plates, the cushions… everything! My Dad’s passion and enthusiasm for what interested him was an important legacy for me.

I think there are a number of themes in my work. These have developed over time and relate to a range of influences: from the art that I love, from literature, music, and movies that have interested me, to events that have happened and experiences that I’ve had. In a way these are fairly standard things like transformation, politics and history, environment, memories and sense of place.

Over the years, a number of people have suggested that the paintings I make are memorials. Until fairly recently I never set out, or consciously chose, to paint memorials, rather it has always been there and was part of the process of making things for me. Recently, it has become more of a conscious decision, wanting some of the paintings I make to deal with what I believe are fairly universal themes of loss and reflection.

The landscape and coastline of north east England, along with its coastal buildings and monuments, has been an ongoing subject in your work. What is it about this landscape that you find particularly inspiring?

I’ve lived near the coast all my life and the vernacular architecture, buildings and man-made structures interest me – the way they are constructed and the function or purpose they serve, the reasoning behind their construction in the first place, and the way these elements coexist – I find it fascinating.

Landscape is where we are located, it’s where we are in our imagination, our history, politics and geography. Landscape becomes a way of creating a space, physically and in our imaginations, for ourselves and others to inhabit. I think my paintings are elegies of a sort… but then again, the emotion is as much in the viewer as it is in the artwork.

There are places I’m obsessed by, from the Farne Islands and Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast to Coney Island in Brooklyn. Having lived in a few coastal towns with fairgrounds, Coney Island is a unique place with an incredible history.

Is memory, either personal or collective, important to you? You often reference old family photos in your work or reflect on scenes from classic movies.

Where do my paintings come from? I think it was Tom Waits who said, “well I sleep with one eye open”. Memory, both personal and collective, is important. Memory becomes a creative act, a way of developing and engaging with our notions of the past. A way of contemplating those events, stories and experiences that happen to us as humans.

I find family photos fascinating. There’s a big difference between the way my family took photographs in the past and digital photography today. Photographs were few and far between then. The ones that exist are in a way more concentrated in a sense, because of the way they were taken. There are no photographs of the whole family because one person was taking the picture.

There are a small handful of films I could watch on repeat forever and a few, particularly those where there’s a switch between black and white to colour, that resonate with me in a way that I’m not sure why! With some classic films, there’s a history and mythology to them that goes beyond the initial appearance on the screen. Oh, to be in a film with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall!

Anyone who follows you on Instagram will know that you like to mark the lives of certain artists, actors and entertainers, often from the golden age of Hollywood, by posting their photos on the anniversary of the day they were born (or sometimes died). Why is it important for you to mark their lives in this way?

I love what is often described as the golden age of Hollywood. Marking the lives of those I have an interest in is a small way of engaging with them, or at least marking my memories of having an engagement with them, of seeing their art, reading their stories and remembering for myself when I first became interested in them.

Instagram is like a scrapbook, the kind I would have had when I was a child, filling it with the things I found interesting or engaging, some of it frivolous and other bits serious. The dynamics of the engagement is interesting too. Through Instagram, I’ve had conversations with people around the world, and I think that is amazing. Seeing the work of other artists develop, or having a glimpse into their studios, is fabulous, and I love funny clips of cute animals too. Engaging with Matthew Burrows’ Artist Support Pledge and Tom Croft’s Portraits for NHS Heroes project has been wonderful. I really value the conversations I’ve had.

And you have a particular interest in the life and work of Harry Houdini?

I must have been around six or seven years old when I saw Tony Curtis on TV in the Houdini film of 1953 and I was captivated. In 2019 I visited Houdini’s grave in Machpelah Cemetery, Queens, New York City, and placed a pebble from the beach at Whitley Bay on his grave. The story of his life and death are the stuff of legend and have fascinated me ever since I saw that film. The more I read about him, the more amazing he becomes. He is more than a magician, escape artist, or debunker of spiritualism and phoney con men. His name is still invoked regularly when someone pulls off a great escape, be it a person or a football team, or in a Tom Waits song. He visited Newcastle upon Tyne twice, hanging off the Castle Keep to promote one show. Watching him perform an escape or making an elephant disappear must have been incredible. Someone once said painting is like keeping an elephant, it’s time consuming, smelly, incredibly expensive and sooner or later it’ll shit on your head! As a painter, I’m an illusionist of sorts!

You once painted a portrait of Frida Kahlo and have also created works that directly reference a painting by Arshile Gorky. What is about these two artists that fascinates you?

I painted Frida Kahlo a few years ago because I came across an image of her on her wedding day and she wasn’t obviously recognisable. She's one of those people whose work and life are equally amazing, one of those people you’d never forget meeting. Her paintings are fabulous.

Arshile Gorky is another painter I’ve loved for years and I first saw one of his The Artist and His Mother paintings in an exhibition of American art in Edinburgh just before I started my foundation course in Cardiff in 1977. Many years later, I saw both versions of the painting together in a retrospective exhibition at Tate. I was drawn both to the story of their making and the photograph he used as source material. Like Gorky, my mother died when I was very young, though not in the terrible and horrendous circumstances that his mother, Shushan der Marderosian, died. I first attempted to paint two works using a photograph of me and my mother, taken at a birthday party in the back yard in Ashington where I grew up, during the first year of my fine art degree course. But I struggled emotionally to complete them. It’s taken a long time to return to them.

In the early days of Vane, you made a series of sculptural installation pieces using floral wreaths or tributes. Was there a particular idea or theme that you were exploring through these works?

I made floral pieces for several of the early Vane projects. They were inspired by a humorous floral tribute I saw in a hearse on its way to a funeral and were made with flowers that decayed over time, and this transformed the look of the piece as the exhibition continued. The intention was to make other pieces, including ones where the flowers grew as the exhibition progressed, and I also wanted to paint versions of them too, but the cost was incredibly high and getting an outlet for them was difficult. I became interested in other areas of work, but perhaps I might get an opportunity to revisit these in the future, who knows.

You’ve recently returned to a series of Dead Tree paintings that you first started in the 1980s. What prompted you to revisit this subject matter?

I first worked on the Dead Tree paintings in the early 1980s. I thought of the tree as a way of commenting on humanity’s weird relationship with nature. The tree took on the flaws, the foibles, the idiocy, the dangerousness and downright silliness of humanity. These paintings helped me get selected for a few MA courses and I chose to return to the north east of England from Southend where I’d been living. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to develop those paintings and the more I tried over the years the less they worked, and I was never happy with the results. However, I always felt they were unfinished business. The paintings were based on a real tree I came across on the edge of Ashington, Northumberland. I knew that I needed to add to the roster of characters who interact with the tree. As is often the case, when you try too hard it doesn’t work, and then when you least expect it something comes to mind and a group of characters have emerged 30, or 35 years later. I recently made a series of eight paintings on wooden panels that belonged to other works from the same time period. I developed a few ideas around the reappearance of the Dead Tree and added some of these new characters, and I will work on more paintings of the Dead Tree and cast of characters in the future. But I also want to continue with the landscape work and portraits I’ve developed over the years. I’m genuinely excited about the different things I’m working on and really look forward to getting in the studio each morning.

You worked for many years as an art therapist. Did this have an impact on your own practice?

In between my first degree and MA I did my postgraduate art therapy training at Goldsmiths, London. This followed on from work I’d been doing on art projects and related work in hospitals and clinical settings. I’d always wanted my art practice to be useful, to have a purpose beyond the studio. This led me to applying to study at Goldsmiths which was a brilliant course run by amazing people. Subsequently, I worked part-time, keeping my painting going alongside art therapy work. I feel really lucky to have gone to art college and to have spent my working life in the NHS, which for all its difficulties and lack of funding is a brilliant organisation and political ideal that needs to be fought for. At the same time, I was always clear it was a job with very clear boundaries and constraints. By that I mean there were formal aspects to the job which you are expected to uphold. I got to work with some amazing people and had some fabulous colleagues that I learned an enormous amount from. I loved being part of a team, working with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and nurses. Sometimes it felt like being in a sports team and as the only art therapist I got to take the free kicks. I purposefully have never made work about those experiences but of course they emerge indirectly and hopefully sincerely without betraying anyone.

Do you have any particular memories of your experience of working with Vane?

Being part of the team that put Vane together was enormously enjoyable. Prior to those first Vane activities or festivals there wasn’t a great deal happening in Newcastle or the surrounding areas. For a city with three art colleges that was disappointing! Vane made something happen, that anyone who wanted to, could participate in, and for me this was what was exciting. Of course, this meant the quality of the work varied enormously, but it does anyway.

One of my fondest memories was of the football match I organised, Vane versus The Rest of the World, as part of Vane2000. It was an enjoyable event where a lot of artists and friends participated. Sadly, two of the team, Paul Moss and Joe Woodhouse, have since died, which is tragic considering how young they were.

There were lots of people who participated in those first events and have made and continued to make fabulous work. It would be interesting to look at the number of art students who now stay in the area compared with a period before Vane. The really positive outcome from those first events was the development of a community which encouraged other groups to realise they could make things happen too. There are lots of organisations now and Newcastle and Gateshead is a far richer place for the visual arts than it was when we started. And it is to the credit of Paul and Chris that they have continued to create opportunities with the sense of developing a community over the past 25 years. Having places to develop ideas, make and show work is crucial for any art form. Being part of the team was a fabulous time in my life. I hope Vane can continue, in what might be difficult economic times ahead, to provide opportunities and enthusiasm for the future.

Interview by Stephen Palmer

Read more about William Heard’s exhibition at Vane.