The Poetic Landscape.

My name is Stuart Rushworth and I was born in 1961 and I am an autistic fine art landscape painter based in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire in the U.K. I paint on canvases that are usually no larger than 30” x 18” and I use acrylic paint extensively. I was trained at Bradford School of Art where I began using oils, but oil paint is incompressible and I found I could not layer and excavate paint in the way that I wanted. Effects that I had researched using willow charcoal and eraser on mounting-board could not transfer to oils or gouache, therefore acrylics became my essential medium.

Photograph: Judy Woods Series (2023).

My B.A. Hons. Fine Art and and M.A. Visual Studies degrees were completed at Bradford School of Art. After these it was through my collaboration with the deaf artist and photographer Natalie Riggan that I have been able to adapt to community studios. I find approaching galleries and projects very hard. Natalie and I have been collaborating for more than twenty years and we have made progress joining small community art spaces, which is more than I thought possible when I was younger.

When I was young poetry was my first art. Poetry was like a searchlight that swept inward and outward at the same time. Joining the poetry workshop of David Anwnn Jones in 1983 when I made another attempt at education was a moment of liberation. I realised that an art form could make for a kind of ‘campsite’ out in the world. Poetry led eventually to one of the workshops of The Kirklees Writing In The Community Programme. Below is a photograph taken by a photographer from The Daily Telegraph. The article was exploring The Huddersfield Poetry Renaissance.

There Is That Other Path

Butterflies go that way

Children with distracted gazes

Walked but ignored dogs

Late afternoon birds

And flies

And shadows

And then I went too

Escorted by bees to the courts of flowers

And the cobbled ground

Uneven where spiders cross

Like sudden typewriters

Inspired to run

Where ivy spins

And fences lean

Into the great absences

Of thick chattered grass

Then light is closed again

Where trees

Make comment with codes of light

And where the sparkling goes

Into the dampened ground

Where my face shines briefly

As I look away

And the thick wedded scents

Of unknown depths descend

And then all is bright ahead

So fixed and conspicuous

Where I

And that overbroad world

Have changed.

I turned to art training because I had been a family cartoonist when I was young. When my poetry era ended and my story-writing years began I felt I had found a wider road. Storytelling is different from poetry, which for me was the act of being aware of, and concerned for, one reader at a time. Stories are a broader address. Poetry remained within me and I believe it is now expressed in paint. The gestural mark becomes a layer, the layer an abstract voice, from the abstract voice a place emerges. The painting recovers some of its early marks through excavating paint. The origin and the surface combine as two voices. This to me is a poetic process.

My story-writing has led to a series of books published on Amazon. I am especially proud of ‘This, That And The Monsters‘, which includes a main character who is autistic. Many of my stories engage with themes that were important to me as a child, the idea of a hiding place, a secret, an unending journey that cannot be completely known, small unimportant things becoming important, and finally the idea of modesty, that somewhere in the world there is a quiet place.

IF WE COULD CALM US

our teeth wouldn’t clack together quite as much

our eyes wouldn’t go round and round

the faces we’ve pulled for the last week

would narrow into mere anticipation

I wouldn’t have to remember

to fit you into a minute’s silence

I miss thinking

I wish the future was in the future

In 2023 I helped my mother edit her memoir to the finish. It had taken twenty years.

My academic influences were Gerhard Richter, Joan Eardley, Sigmar Polke, while influences in recent times have included Andrew Cranston. My paintings are articulations of the many layers I live every day and through painting I access the poetic, memory and immediacy. Natalie and I both express our private worlds through our painting.

I have not exhibited very often. The Dyehouse Gallery in Bradford, The Crossley Gallery in Dean Clough in Halifax, South Square Gallery, Thornton and then various open exhibitions in the community represent my fullest involvement. Natalie and I rent art spaces in Huddersfield that are available through joining CollaborARTi.

Belisha Beacons.

This night as unresponsive, as if there could be no day

To follow, no curt sun, no list of rain.

Then, absurdly, since I can do nothing in this,

I am a beaten heart

An eye with nowhere to go. An ear pressed.

It is there, in the pool of all I know,

The belisha beacons measure soundlessly

What everything must cross

Or leave behind, or meet.

Almost together, almost safe.

All I Ever Told You Was This

That a heart can spill

Or fly raggedly

Or freeze under paper frosts

Or never shine again

All I ever told was this

That poems are ladders

Made of snakes

Flames made of rain

Arguments of silences

All I ever told you was this

That words run out of people

To say them

To hurt with them

To die beside them

All I ever told you was this

That I would leave it to poems to tell you

Like I had given it to a spirit

To a face in the dark

To a limping old book.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Recent Paintings (Annotated).

“Layered Scene” was a difficult painting because the sky and the foreground were produced with different intentions. The sky originally had some purpose close to storytelling, there was a narration being set up. However over a long period the foreground became very static and this made for a tension between the movement of the sky and the thickly gouged wall. I thought many times that I should introduce some element that might be considered an event, but the wall pressed hard against the picture plane and seemed always to prevent any light touches.

During the fitting of an extra painting space I was tidying alongside a young man who also has Asperger’s Syndrome. He allowed me to take one of his precious items, a large Buddha ornament, and in return I offered him this rather troubled painting and, surprisingly, he eagerly accepted it. I sometimes forget that viewers are building their own responses to my paintings. Giving paintings away is a tradition in art, but in my case my close family are unable to guarantee that they can preserve my paintings. Ebay, which is my family’s particular expertise, is unsuitable for art. They don’t know any galleries or feel connected to any art shops. It is likely that many paintings would be binned. It is my responsibility to save any paintings by trying to exhibit them. This is another common theme in art. People who do not understand art cannot be expected to adopt the role of custodians. What was explained to me once is that a small number of paintings will survive, because paintings in an odd way have what might be called a ‘life of their own.’ Sometimes after our best efforts to shepherd paintings out of harm’s way we have to accept this. Writing can lead to an insatiable need to see a piece of writing constantly read and appreciated. I think artists can flow on from a work. I perhaps need to learn to let go of work and indeed give paintings away more often. They do make for very unusual gifts.

“Small Landscape” developed in layers and I had to stop myself from overfilling the far distance. Sometimes we need to preserve and I made a point of concentrating on the foreground. I have occasionally been in a car driving over a moor at a particular point in the evening when the sun gives a far hill kind of incandescence. I love these moments and in this painting I happened upon a means to show my fascination.

Bursaries.

I have received two bursaries in the arts. The first was The New Beginnings Award for poetry, which I received in 1993 from Yorkshire Arts. Then in 2014 I was awarded The Joan Day Painting Bursary, which led to an exhibition at South Square Gallery, Thornton near Bradford.

Thank you for reading this statement. If anyone has any questions regarding the work on this website then I would be happy to answer them if I can.

Stuart Vernon Rushworth.

E: artyvernons@gmail.com

Some Life Credits.

I would like to thank all of my tutors from Huddersfield Technical College, including Bini Atkinson and Pippa Ashworth and Dale Webster. Also my tutors at Bradford School of Art, past and present. Also South Square Gallery, Thornton (on its moor-top). Howard Eaglestone. Colin Lloyd. Martin Hearne. Jill Good. Simon Ford. Robert Galeta. The Art House, Wakefield. All of my graduate friends. Dave Cowan and Emily and family. David Blackburn M.B.E. and finally, Natalie who has been the best supporter of all.

Links.

Howard Eaglestone:

Snooping Through Studios- Howard Eaglestone

Pippa Ashworth:

https://www.pippaashworth.co.uk

Bini Atkinson:

https://www.culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk/news/day-life/day-life-bini-anson

Dale Webster:

https://dalewebster.carbonmade.com

Remembering Colin Lloyd:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/04/colin-lloyd-obituary

Home

Remembering David Blackburn:

Links to websites.

The Art House, Wakefield:

the-arthouse.org.uk

The South Square Gallery, Thornton:

southsquarecentre.co.uk

CollaborARTi:

Welcome

Andrew Cranston:

https://www.inglebygallery.com/artists/32-andrew-cranston/works

10 Little Poems Please:

’10 Little Poems Please,’ is a collaboration. The book was produced to inspire young illustrators who might like to make small posters with words and pictures combined.