Grandfather

I ended 2011 looking forward. So, I will start 2012 looking back.

This is a photograph of a painting of a photograph. It doesn't show my grandfather - who did not look anything like that and rarely drank beer. It was painted by him. He was born in Nuneaton in 1900 and worked as an engineering draughtsman in Coventry. He also occasionally painted watercolours and took photographs. I recall a lovely rural scene on his dining room wall, dated 1926, which he said was painted during the General Strike.

In his seventies he got cancer. His GP was concerned about his morale and encouraged him to find an interest. He enquired about the General Strike painting, complimented him on it and urged him to resume painting. So, for the last four or five years of his life, he painted constantly, usually taking subjects from his photographs, which he showed via a projector on a screen next to his easel. This painting though was inspired by a black and white picture in a collection of 1930s photographs. It was finished in the year he died, 1979.