Hyfler/Rosner
2003-09-17 03:16:39 UTC
TOM TITHERINGTON;
ARTIST WHO PORTRAYED LIFE ON WARTIME MERSEYSIDE
BYLINE: DAVID BUCKMAN <independent>
Thomas Henry Titherington, artist and teacher: born Liverpool 6 May 1934;
married 1955 Katherine Gore (died 2001; three sons, one daughter); died
Bamber Bridge, Lancashire 19 August 2003.
HIGHLIGHT:
Immediacy and relaxation: A Day at the Seaside', linocut by Titherington,
1997
TOM TITHERINGTON was an artist who avoided the creative rut. He was one of a
select band of painters and printmakers who at the end of their careers are
able to produce work charged with as much freshness as the day they entered
art school.
The paintings and linocuts in his exhibition "Mention the War" at Liverpool
University's Senate House earlier this year explored life during the Second
World War, not through adult eyes but those of a highly impressionable and
intelligent child. The witty, sad and colourful images were infused with an
electric charge: they drew on Titherington's own wartime on Merseyside, long
experience of teaching art to children and recollections of Liverpool people
sent to him as the result of a newspaper feature. Titherington summed up his
attitude to what he had recalled in some printed notes for the show:
It is saddening to see heart-felt memory and past experience sometimes
dismissed as "mere nostalgia". This is particularly maddening when it is
expressed in class terms so that the life and times of Lt-Col This or
Vice-Admiral That are accorded their appropriate value, whilst the
recollections and responses of "ordinary people" are more easily forgotten
or ignored.
Thomas Henry Titherington was born in Liverpool in 1934, the eldest of four
brothers. His barber father, also Thomas Henry Titherington, and mother
Isabella, known as Sharky, created a loving environment in straitened
circumstances.
Family good times in pre-war Liverpool were well reflected in the university
exhibition. Titherington recaptured a sunny Sunday outing:
The packing, the sandwiches, the spades, the bucket, the basket, the towels.
The tram, the pier head, the gangway, the landing stage, the boat and the
breeze. Over the water to New Brighton. The sand, the sea, the people, the
noise, the seagulls. The delight. The sheer bloody gritty delight of it all.
The homeward ferry. The tiredness. The dozing tram journey. The terrace
house.
This idyll evaporated when his father was called up for war service in the
Army. Tom was evacuated with his school to North Wales, but returned "in
time to experience the May Blitz of 1941. This was to me a theatrical
performance," again graphically depicted in his exhibition.
His father returned bronzed from five years in the Middle East, Sicily,
Rhodesia and South Africa, but for years after was ill with tuberculosis.
Tom became very much the head of a poor household. He was artistically
gifted, and his parents supported his ambitions.
Between 1950 and 1955, he was a student at Liverpool School of Art, a dynamo
of British art education in the post-war years. His teachers included
talented men such as Arthur Ballard, George Mayer-Marton, Ted Griffiths and
Martin Bell. Keen to improve his knowledge, Titherington later studied at
Liverpool University, in 1976, and Lancaster University, in 1980.
The North-West was the focus of his increasingly varied career. Titherington
was teacher, art teacher, then lecturer and finally head of art at Edge Hill
College of Higher Education, at Ormskirk in Lancashire.
He developed a string of interests that made him well known locally. He
became a freelance broadcaster with his own show, Teacher's Bookshelf, on
BBC Radio Lancashire. He drew prolifically for local publications. He was a
lifelong member of the Labour Party, a member of Borough Council in Chorley
where he lived and a parish councillor. "Village community life was very
important to him," says his son, Steve.
Titherington had met his future wife, Kate Gore, when they were students at
Liverpool School of Art. She too became a painter and teacher. They had one
daughter and three younger sons. "Their eight grandchildren were very much
an inspiration in his later work," says Steve. "He was always appreciative
of children's work, amassing many examples in his career."
Alongside his teaching and community activities, Titherington produced his
own pictures. These were created in a redbrick outbuilding in Accrington,
with the rather grand name Red Shed Studio. "It was christened by one of my
grandsons. I thought it a good name, so I use it," he told me.
Titherington was a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. Other
mixed exhibitions included many in the north and north-west of England and
in London, winning awards including the first prize last year in the
Liverpool 8 Exhibition at Liverpool University, for graduates of the School
of Art. Also in 2002, he had a solo exhibition, "Memories + Events", at
Astley Hall, Chorley, other one-mans taking place over the years in England
and overseas at the Faculty Gallery, Morningside, in Iowa.
In his work, Titherington remained
beguiled by the "naive" and captivated by the spontaneous and apparently
effortless. I try to hold on to a sense of immediacy and relaxation
throughout the inevitably time-consuming (and often convoluted) business of
putting myself in the picture and making sense of things.
It was appropriate that, as he neared the end of his personal artistic
excursion into the events of the 1939-45 war, he "decided it would be right
to involve children in any follow-up activities". He went back to what had
been his old school to interact artistically with the children, some of
their pictures appearing in the booklet accompanying the "Mention the War"
show.
A complete set of prints from the exhibition has been acquired by Liverpool
University for its own collection. Lancaster University, Edge Hill College
and many private collections in Britain and America also hold Titheringon's
pictures.
ARTIST WHO PORTRAYED LIFE ON WARTIME MERSEYSIDE
BYLINE: DAVID BUCKMAN <independent>
Thomas Henry Titherington, artist and teacher: born Liverpool 6 May 1934;
married 1955 Katherine Gore (died 2001; three sons, one daughter); died
Bamber Bridge, Lancashire 19 August 2003.
HIGHLIGHT:
Immediacy and relaxation: A Day at the Seaside', linocut by Titherington,
1997
TOM TITHERINGTON was an artist who avoided the creative rut. He was one of a
select band of painters and printmakers who at the end of their careers are
able to produce work charged with as much freshness as the day they entered
art school.
The paintings and linocuts in his exhibition "Mention the War" at Liverpool
University's Senate House earlier this year explored life during the Second
World War, not through adult eyes but those of a highly impressionable and
intelligent child. The witty, sad and colourful images were infused with an
electric charge: they drew on Titherington's own wartime on Merseyside, long
experience of teaching art to children and recollections of Liverpool people
sent to him as the result of a newspaper feature. Titherington summed up his
attitude to what he had recalled in some printed notes for the show:
It is saddening to see heart-felt memory and past experience sometimes
dismissed as "mere nostalgia". This is particularly maddening when it is
expressed in class terms so that the life and times of Lt-Col This or
Vice-Admiral That are accorded their appropriate value, whilst the
recollections and responses of "ordinary people" are more easily forgotten
or ignored.
Thomas Henry Titherington was born in Liverpool in 1934, the eldest of four
brothers. His barber father, also Thomas Henry Titherington, and mother
Isabella, known as Sharky, created a loving environment in straitened
circumstances.
Family good times in pre-war Liverpool were well reflected in the university
exhibition. Titherington recaptured a sunny Sunday outing:
The packing, the sandwiches, the spades, the bucket, the basket, the towels.
The tram, the pier head, the gangway, the landing stage, the boat and the
breeze. Over the water to New Brighton. The sand, the sea, the people, the
noise, the seagulls. The delight. The sheer bloody gritty delight of it all.
The homeward ferry. The tiredness. The dozing tram journey. The terrace
house.
This idyll evaporated when his father was called up for war service in the
Army. Tom was evacuated with his school to North Wales, but returned "in
time to experience the May Blitz of 1941. This was to me a theatrical
performance," again graphically depicted in his exhibition.
His father returned bronzed from five years in the Middle East, Sicily,
Rhodesia and South Africa, but for years after was ill with tuberculosis.
Tom became very much the head of a poor household. He was artistically
gifted, and his parents supported his ambitions.
Between 1950 and 1955, he was a student at Liverpool School of Art, a dynamo
of British art education in the post-war years. His teachers included
talented men such as Arthur Ballard, George Mayer-Marton, Ted Griffiths and
Martin Bell. Keen to improve his knowledge, Titherington later studied at
Liverpool University, in 1976, and Lancaster University, in 1980.
The North-West was the focus of his increasingly varied career. Titherington
was teacher, art teacher, then lecturer and finally head of art at Edge Hill
College of Higher Education, at Ormskirk in Lancashire.
He developed a string of interests that made him well known locally. He
became a freelance broadcaster with his own show, Teacher's Bookshelf, on
BBC Radio Lancashire. He drew prolifically for local publications. He was a
lifelong member of the Labour Party, a member of Borough Council in Chorley
where he lived and a parish councillor. "Village community life was very
important to him," says his son, Steve.
Titherington had met his future wife, Kate Gore, when they were students at
Liverpool School of Art. She too became a painter and teacher. They had one
daughter and three younger sons. "Their eight grandchildren were very much
an inspiration in his later work," says Steve. "He was always appreciative
of children's work, amassing many examples in his career."
Alongside his teaching and community activities, Titherington produced his
own pictures. These were created in a redbrick outbuilding in Accrington,
with the rather grand name Red Shed Studio. "It was christened by one of my
grandsons. I thought it a good name, so I use it," he told me.
Titherington was a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. Other
mixed exhibitions included many in the north and north-west of England and
in London, winning awards including the first prize last year in the
Liverpool 8 Exhibition at Liverpool University, for graduates of the School
of Art. Also in 2002, he had a solo exhibition, "Memories + Events", at
Astley Hall, Chorley, other one-mans taking place over the years in England
and overseas at the Faculty Gallery, Morningside, in Iowa.
In his work, Titherington remained
beguiled by the "naive" and captivated by the spontaneous and apparently
effortless. I try to hold on to a sense of immediacy and relaxation
throughout the inevitably time-consuming (and often convoluted) business of
putting myself in the picture and making sense of things.
It was appropriate that, as he neared the end of his personal artistic
excursion into the events of the 1939-45 war, he "decided it would be right
to involve children in any follow-up activities". He went back to what had
been his old school to interact artistically with the children, some of
their pictures appearing in the booklet accompanying the "Mention the War"
show.
A complete set of prints from the exhibition has been acquired by Liverpool
University for its own collection. Lancaster University, Edge Hill College
and many private collections in Britain and America also hold Titheringon's
pictures.