Impact report master 2019 digital single

KEN HOWARD
ROYAL ACADEMICIAN
Create Patron, artist Ken Howard OBE RA, has been
celebrated over his 60-year career for his paintings
of London, Cornwall and Venice. Below, he talks
about starting out as a painter and how art helps
people see.
One of my earliest memories of being creative is
when I was painting in north London on a railway
siding. This old fellow came along and looked at my
painting and he said “Sonny, I’ve walked across this
railway yard for 30 years and this morning I can see
that it’s beautiful.”
I think that’s the important thing in painting, to help
people see. Painting is about three things: it’s about
revelation, which means showing people something
which they’ve seen every day but never really
appreciated; it’s about celebration, which can be a
celebration of a gasworks or a railway siding just as
much as a beautiful woman or a flower; and it’s about
communication, which is reaching out to people and
speaking to people. I think it’s very important that
painting is accessible to people and isn’t so difficult
that they say “That’s all very well but I don’t really
know what it’s about.”
I remember I used to go into the City on Sundays in
my old clapped-out car with paintings strapped on
the roof and this man came along. He looked at my
painting and he said, “I like your painting, but you’ve
painted two churches and there’s only one there”.
So I said, “What about the reflection of the church?”
His eyes opened up and he said, “I’ve walked down
this road for thirty years and I’ll never see it the same
again”. Because I’d shown him a way of seeing it, and
a marble wall with a reflection of the church in it
made it look as if there were two churches.
One of the reasons I gave up teaching in ’73 was that
it was moving much more towards people having
academic qualifications and not being creative. We
had youngsters who wanted to go to art school but
couldn’t because they didn’t have the stipulated
number of O-levels and A-levels. Which is nonsense
really, because I remember I was in the staff room
and we decided that as members of staff none of us
would have got to art school under those conditions,
when all that mattered really was whether you had
talent for the arts. Without painting I think I would
have been termed now as someone who didn’t
have opportunities in life. Create gives everyone
opportunities to be creative – adults as well as
youngsters, people in prison, all ages.
“WITHOUT PAINTING I WOULD
HAVE BEEN TERMED AS
SOMEONE WHO DIDN’T HAVE
OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE.”
It was quite difficult to make a living as an artist to
begin with – my dad worked in a factory and my
parents didn’t have any money. People see art as
a luxury, whereas I think art is a necessity. We’re
here for a very short time, and I think in that short
time anything that makes our time here richer is
worthwhile. And art does make our time here richer.
When Create approached me to become a Patron I
thought it was a very good idea, because it gave me
the opportunity to reach out to people through the
arts. You constantly meet people who say, “I would
have loved to have painted, I saw a sunrise the other
morning”. I think if you react to things like that then
you should do something about it, and the thing
that you do about it is that you make art. So I think
for people who Create works with, the actual act of
making art is important. I think there’s a lot of talent
out there which has never been dipped into.
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