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34|OX MAGAZINE | JUNE 2016 OX MAGAZINE | JUNE 2016 | 35

ARTART

Politics is a serious business and Paul Thomas, an artist from Benson near Wallingford, has been drawing humour from it - quite literally - for thirty years.

“I have always drawn, for as long as I can remember” recalls Paul, “and by the age of 5 or 6, I was copying cartoons from the newspapers. Bizarrely, one of the first drawings I remember doing clearly was of Ted Heath with a pointy nose when he was leader of the Conservative party before becoming prime minister in 1970.

“And, odd though it may seem, even as a small child I wanted to be political cartoonist when I grew up. I was exposed to politics from an early age – I came from a family who talked about political issues and I enjoyed Private Eye. I never really liked children’s comics because they were too jokey. My dad’s choice of paper, the Daily Telegraph, meant I was exposed to Nicholas Garland whose cartoons I adored, cut out and copied.” (Nicholas Garland OBE has a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to cartoon art, and was the official 2012 London Olympic cartoonist.)

“I was a serious child,” Paul says with a delivery so straight that for a moment I’m left deciding whether it’s true or very dry humour, and then he chuckles, “I was a fanatical birdwatcher and there wasn’t much room for frivolity!

Political CartoonistMeet Paul Thomas

Words by Esther Lafferty, Festival Director of Oxfordshire Artweeks

“My father was an encouraging influence, though he wasn’t remotely artistic – that came from my mum’s side of the family. My grandfather was a landscape painter and could never walk past an art shop without going inside. My dad ran an ironmongery shop in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, all his working life and I worked there on and off for about ten years until I was about twenty. The shop was the arena for clever and funny banter between my dad, the other staff and the customers. It could be unforgiving but it really sharpened up my wits, and Dad had a cubby hole next to the counter from which he was like a benign ringmaster keeping it from getting out of hand. I got started at drawing caricatures by sketching the customers: I had a rogue’s gallery just out of sight of the punters!”

From here, Paul’s journey took him via Punch, Private Eye, The Spectator and all the main newspapers, in the days when newspapers used to have three or four cartoonists on the staff, to The Daily Express where he was the political cartoonist from 1998-2015.

Now, Paul characterises himself a professional cynic, taking real satisfaction in thinking up fresh ideas that fit the mood of the moment. “My role was to be rude about the people who are trying to tell us all what to do and to make people laugh on daily basis. I would provide editors with the

ideas for several possible cartoons, and they would choose one for publication. It was quite a pressure coming up with several ideas every day, day in day out,” he admits, “though then being left alone to create the finished cartoon was a great feeling, rather like free-wheeling a bicycle downhill!”

Cartoon drawing has been an art form for hundreds of years, with its origins in caricatures - from the Italian caricare, to deepen or exaggerate – which give weight to the most striking features of its subject for comic effect. The great Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci all drew caricatures, as technical exercises to define the essence of a person in a few deft strokes of the pen. Political cartoonists, too, have been in evidence for 300 years, and the artists who illustrated the first editions of books by Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll, for example, were both political cartoonists as well as artists.

Sir John Tenniel (1820–1914) was an English illustrator, graphic humourist and political cartoonist whose work was prominent during the second half of the 19th century. He was knighted by Queen Victoria for his artistic achievements in 1893, and is today considered an influential character within the era’s social, literary, and art histories as both the principal political cartoonist for Britain’s Punch magazine for a period of 50 years, and as the artist whose illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are instantly recognisable worldwide.

Cartoons provide a fascinating insight into times gone by and the people who inhabited them – and so, says Paul, do tattoos. Having recently left the

“The tattoo is

an art form, a

practice, and for

many, a ritual”

newspaper world, he has been inspired to create a highly illustrated and fun book, the recently-published Unreliable History of Tattoos.

“The tattoo is an art form, a practice, and for many, a ritual” explains Paul. “Its history is long and colourful, dating to the Neolithic period, when our ancestors marked their bodies with symbolic lines derived from a carbon paste through to today, those same markings can be made on entering neon parlours in our towns and cities, and I’ve always been intrigued by them. People can take tattoos and what they represent so seriously: I wanted to take a different approach and have some fun, and so although the book is loosely based on historical fact, from cavemen, through ancient civilisations to British Kings and Queens, and current celebrities, there’s a truth overlaid with humour and invention.”

On browsing the clever and irreverent pages, bordering on rude, you’ll find the depiction of dozens of tattoos that might have been: “I made them up”, laughs Paul. His political interest can be seen in representations of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. However, there’s social history and royal references too: Stephen Fry is ‘Born To Be Wilde’, and the Queen makes an appearance as she celebrates her ninetieth birthday this month: you’ll see she’s one of 007’s biggest fans…

So, this Father’s Day, smile at the Sphinx’s fingers, learn a little known secret about the Roman games, and discover the tattoo that Charles Darwin kept, literally, under his hat while Henry VIII’s attitude to the Pope is laid bare.

Get the book, or get brave and consider getting your Dad a tattoo! After all, one thing’s for certain – either will last longer than socks.

To see more of Paul’s work, including a new series of Oxford cartoons, or to order a copy of the book (£14.99) visit paulthomascartoons.co.uk

Self Portrait

46|OX MAGAZINE | JULY 2016 OX MAGAZINE | JULY 2016 | 47

ARTART

The Gardens also house a contemporary art gallery in a restored 18th century barn, packed with a� ordable art and craft such as the wonderful ethereal

prints of Flora McLachlan who explains that, with her work, she tries to evoke an ancient and numinous landscape: “I am inspired by medieval romance poetry, the progression of a quest and along the way a vision that stills. I’m interested in the nurturing and destructive aspects of the landscape, its nests and chasms, its sanctuaries entwined with sharp thorns. I like to imagine its secret face when the daylight fades and the creatures come out to roam. I’m feeling for a lost magic: a glimpse through trees of the white hart.”

Discover too ceramics by Artweeks ceramicist Liz Teall who throws pots using red Sta� ordshire clay and decorates them using runny clays coloured with metal oxides and fresh leaves, bringing nature into the gallery space.

“Leaves are my favourite motif,” Liz explains, “as they are varied, beautiful, and emblematic of the cycle of life itself. I press them onto daubs of slip applied to the damp pots and brush a layer of black, white or blue slip over the leaves to cover them and add strokes of contrasting colour, before carefully removing the leaves with a cocktail stick and tweezers! � is rather tricky technique produces both a print and a masked image at the same time.”

� is July, art spills out of the gallery and across the gardens for the fortieth time and the last ever Art In Action. Over the years thousands of people have taken the winding country lanes and been channelled into giant parking � elds with an e� ciency that mirrors the quality of this event where several hundred artists and craftsmen from all over the county demonstrate their skills and show their work from jewellery and ceramics, printmaking, textiles and wood-turning, glass and, new for 2016, digital art and ZenDo (Japanese brushwork). With artists in a series of marquees, the event has always had the feel of a traditional English village fete complete with strawberries and cream and a brass band.

Nature into Jewellery

ESTHER LAFFERTY

Waterperry Gardens, near Wheatley, are a magical place rich with beautiful trees and � owers, classical borders, modern planting, secret corners and long vistas. Originally home to a horticultural college, you’ll now � nd a formal garden, the Mary Rose Garden, Long Colour Border and a waterlily canal with a small arboretum in the meadow area beyond.

Taking inspiration from gardens and countryside today, amongst this year’s artists you’ll � nd Artweeks jeweller Lucy Sylvester. As a child growing up in Oxfordshire collecting twigs, leaves and snail shells, Lucy’s love of nature was evident. “My mum said that as soon as I could walk I was always stu� ng leaves and twigs into my pockets and bringing dead moths home,” She laughs. “I’m not so di� erent now, and now I have two small boys to help me!” � eir woodland � nds are displayed in her studio, old science jars salvaged from skips are � lled with seed heads, fallen leaves and dead insects.

� ese � nds drive Lucy’s creative work – she takes moulds from the delicate forms and recreates them in solid silver and gold, often adding moonstones, opals and diamonds.

“I like the idea of taking a natural form that would decay and disappear into the ground and making it permanent,” she explains. “I had to spend hours in my studio working out how to mould really � ne and delicate objects and to develop the techniques I use now. Once I’ve made a mould I � ll the cavity with molten gold or silver to create that perfect replica, a piece that will last

forever, and yet my work is evolving all the time, as the seasons change,” she enthuses, “and the inspiration is new once more.”

Lucy’s direct casting produces such exact likenesses of bees and dragon� ies, acorns and seed heads, for example, that the pattern in the wings or a leaf ’s vein structure is clear to see, and her Moth and Poppy ring was chosen by the lead costume designer Michele Clapton, for Sansa Stark in the fantasy television drama Game of � rones.

Lucy will be using many of her metalwork skills while demonstrating the creation of her jewellery: see saw piercing, soldering, forming, stone setting and the oxidisation of silver surfaces.

Meet too designer silversmith and jeweller James Dougall whose unique Impasto range is inspired by an artist’s brush stroke – impasto is a technique used in painting, where oil paint is laid on an area of the surface very thickly, usually thick enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Created using wax to make a mould, giving an organic, � uid end result, each piece is meticulously hand crafted in silver and � nished in polished silver, gold vermeil or oxidised to blacken the surface, sometimes including diamonds in the designs. � is unusual approach to designing for silver is based on an exploration of shape and form, combined with function in an attempt to � nd new ways of addressing how the medium is perceived in a rapidly changing world.

Art In Action 2016 is also a chance to hear a range of guest speakers including Jekka McVicar, an English organic gardening expert and TV

broadcaster, on ‘� e long and winding road to Chelsea: from idea to � nished garden’, and Lady Lucinda Lambton who talks about the crafts used in the making of � e Queens Dolls House, one of the largest, most beautiful, and most famous dolls’ houses in the world. Created for Queen Mary in the early 1920s by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, it’s a perfect replica of an aristocratic Edwardian residence – from the wine-cellar, with its tiny bottles to the library, with tiny exquisite volumes of original works by Arthur Conan Doyle, � omas Hardy and Edith Wharton, a garage full of miniature limousines, and running water, electricity and working lifts, and a garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll (1834-1932) the in� uential British horticulturist, garden designer, artist and writer. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States and would surely love Waterperry today in all its glory.

For more on Art In Action 14th-17th July visit www.artinaction.org.uk (adult tickets £17 – concessions and two-four day passes are also available). For more on Lucy Sylvester and James Dougall visit www.lucysylvester.co.uk and www.jamesdougall.com.

Morna Rhys

James DougallLiz Teal

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