The first in a new series of the Tyne Tees Television programme investigating topics affecting life in the Northeast. In this edition a look back on the life and career of renowned Spennymoor born artist Norman Cornish. Alongside examples of his work, Norman talks about his life and experiences both as a coal miner as well as an artist and speaks with friends and acquaintances who all see the importance and relevance of his work. Title: Northern Eye. Norman Cornish Profile of a Painter...

The first in a new series of the Tyne Tees Television programme investigating topics affecting life in the Northeast. In this edition a look back on the life and career of renowned Spennymoor born artist Norman Cornish. Alongside examples of his work, Norman talks about his life and experiences both as a coal miner as well as an artist and speaks with friends and acquaintances who all see the importance and relevance of his work. Title: Northern Eye. Norman Cornish Profile of a Painter Examples of contemporary arts in the Gateshead areas including the Angel of the North, Millennium Bridge across the River Tyne and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Inside the Baltic artist Anthony Gormley walking around an exhibition of his featuring wire-frame figures. Along the Gateshead quayside a series of naked men and women laying in the ground, part of an artwork produced by Spencer Tunick. The painting ‘The Pit Road’ by 87-year-old artist Norman Cornish changes to him working in his studio on a new piece of a local pub scene. As he continues to work a montage of clips from some of the people featured in the programme talking about the importance of Norman and his work. In a hall Norman Cornish explains that he is a working-class person living in a working-class area. The people he paints are more interesting to him because, he believes, the have experienced more of the realities of life. Archive photographs of Spennymoor in County Durham where Norman was born and lived all his life painting scenes from the mining community. Local Historian Bob Abley provides a history of what it was like to live in the town and work in the local mining industry with more black and white photographs to help illustrate his points. Standing beside his painting ‘Dog Talk’ Norman Cornish talks about his education and starting work at the local mine aged fourteen. Archive footage of a men at work in a mine changes to Norman explaining how he got back into painting after seeing a poster by ‘The Spennymoor Settlement’ club. More archive photographs help to illustrate the story of the club and its inspirational organiser Bill Farrell. Norman walks along a street passing a road sign for the Spennymoor Settlement building changes to a painting produced during this time at the club called ‘Spennymoor Snow Scene’. Inside The University Galley, part of Northumbria University in Newcastle, Mara-Helen Wood who is the Keeper of the Norman Cornish Collection talks about the popularity of his exhibitions and of those pieces showing life working as a miner; to help illustrate the point the painting ‘Pit Gantry’. Norman talks about his time working as a miner and getting use to the work over more archive footage of miners working underground as well as from the Tyne Tees programme ‘Shapes of Cornish’ where he is filmed drawing fellow miners. A self portrait changes to a clip from another Tyne Tees production from 1967; ‘Norman Cornish in Paris’ with him walking the streets of the French capital and returning home to Spennymoor comparing the men on Paris with the men of his hometown. The Cornish painting ‘Edward Street, Man Walking Dogs’ changes to another clip from ‘Shapes of Cornish’ showing the same street in Spennymoor and Norman talking about his liking of the old-fashioned lampposts. Another painting of Edward Street with St Paul’s Church in the background changes to Norman turning into and walking along the same street today. He talks about going for walks through the area and the people he met, as he speaks his painting ‘Bishop Close Street, Spennymoor, County Durham’ fades to two young women, one pushing a child’s buggy, passing Edward Street similar to an image in one of Norman’s pieces. Standing beside the front door of a house in Edward Street Bob Abley shows Norman a postcard of one of his works showing the street and a woman pushing a pram past St Paul’s Church. Bob says a local woman sends postcards of Normans work to America each year. He says to Norman that his work is ‘worldwide’, Norman doesn’t believe him and says he wants to be ‘an unnoticed bloke’ as if he is known its him, they would pose which isn’t what he wants. A painting featuring two women chatting. At County Hall in Durham Norman and Mara-Helen Wood walks through the entrance and looks up at the 30ft Miners Gala Mural hanging above the door. Over views of the mural Norman talking about its origins and connection to the Durham coalfields and annual gala. Mara-Helen Wood comments on the mural’s importance to Durham. In another room at County Hall other works of Norman’s either hanging on the wall or laid out on a table. Norman comments that he hasn’t seen some of the works for more than forty years. He and Mara-Helen look them over chatting about their history and origins, he is relieved they aren’t as amateurish as he believed they might have been. Title: Northern Eye. Norman Cornish Profile of a Painter Another clip from the Tyne Tees programme ‘Shapes of Cornish’ of Norman sitting in a pub drawing some of the regulars drinking pints of beer. He likes these people because they are real. Back at The University Galley Mara-Helen Wood talks about the difficult decisions he has had to make over the years about his career, he is shrewd and is one with his work and environment. As she speaks another clip from ‘Shapes of Cornish’ featuring Norman walking though Spennymoor. In his studio Norman talks about an idea he once had of moving to the Newcastle area, but it is in Spennymoor where he wants to be to drawing these people, he doesn’t need anywhere else. Another clip from ‘Shapes of Cornish’ this time of Norman walking into the Stone Gallery in Newcastle changes to a clip from another Tyne Tees production ‘Mister Lowry’ of the artist LS Lowry walking also walking into The Stone Galley in 1970. From the same programme Lowry at work in his studio. Mara-Helen Wood doesn’t see a comparison between the two artists today, Norman is more domestic and emotional person. Norman talks about Lowry who he describes as a loner and the different between his working life as a miner and Lowry’s as a rent-collector. As he talks additional clips from ‘Mister Lowry’ and of coal miners working underground. Another Cornish pastel drawing of two miners heading to work changes to a painting of the writer Sid Chaplin, a friend and colleague of Normans. Sid’s son Michael Chaplin talks about Norman and his passions as well as being someone who works in a solitary profession. As he talks Norman in his studio working on another piece. The painting ‘Miners on the Pit Road’ changes to those of the inside of the Hilton Hotel in Gateshead and a painting of the Gateshead quayside hanging on a wall. In his office renowned local architect and art collector Alan Smith talks about Norman’s artworks and its collectability around the word. A photograph of Alan aged fourteen when Alan met Norman and became to him a ‘beacon of hope’ in pursuing a career as an architect. In his studio Norman talks about their encounter and the advise he gave to become an architect rather than an artist. The painting ‘Eddy’s Fish Shop’ changes to Norman at The University Galley talking about drawing the street scene and returning a week later to see the shop was gone. A hand holds up a postcard of the painting, behind it the space where the shop was on Craddock Street in Spennymoor which is today a car park. The automated production line inside the Nissan car factory at Sunderland with men working on various part of the line. Norman is given a tour of the plant, for him it’s the size of the plant that is a surprise, the size of several football pitches. He watches one worker on the line and explains why cars irritate him. He sees cars like aphids on a rose bush in that they shouldn’t really be there. Norman sits and draws some of the men on the production line near him, he explains to his guide how he puts his drawing together is like how these cars are put together. He is less impressed with the factory than he is with the ‘little fellas’ working inside them. On a shelf in his studio boxes of various paints and colours, on a windowsill pots of various painting brushes. Around the studio a selection of his works sitting on a shelf. Norman talks about liking being around ‘his things’, he is always thinking about paintings and drawings. The painting ‘The Darts Player’ changes to Norman explain that if he was born today, he might have gone to college and become an arts teacher. He couldn’t work in the mines as they are none, as he talks the painting ‘Pit Road Lights’. The painting of his wife entitled ‘Sarah’ with Norman explaining that people are created by their experiences, he doesn’t see himself as a famous artist just ‘a bloke who draws’. In the living room of their home Norman sits drawing wife Sarah as she does the ironing. Michael Chaplin says that Normans legacy is that his paints will give not just an idea of what a mining town looked like, but also give something of the essence of how people lived, how they behaved and what they were like. As he talks the painting ‘Spennymoor Snow Scene’. Title: With thanks to Northumbria University Art Gallery, Red Box Design Group Credit: Camera Alistair McKenzie Sound Chris Corner Archive Researcher Gillian Robinson Graphics Jon King Production Manager Christine Stewart-Tilling Sound Post Production The Edge Picture Editor Peter Telford Executive Producer Graeme Thompson Series Producer Mary Wimpress Producer/Director Sheilagh Matheson © ITV Tyne Tees 2007 End credit: Production for ITV