Ebb tide for fishermen

ANDREW Cheetham has recorded Scarborough’s declining fishing industry for 10 years. John Woodcock reports.

When artist Andrew Cheetham says he’s touched greatness he means, of course, the work of another.

It happened at the Tate in London. He turned pages of the sketchbooks of a giant who, about two centuries ago, was recording scenes not so different from those which have driven Cheetham’s life for the last decade.

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The experience was priceless. To recall his personal contact with some of JMW Turner’s images of Scarborough helps to lift the spirits when his own art is having a troubled day there.

“His sketchbooks are inspirational. There are seascapes, frets, fishing boats, the castle, kids around rock pools, harbour workers…sights and situations familiar to me too. I hope this doesn’t sound daft, but looking through Turner’s drawings was like talking to him.”

During numerous visits to Yorkshire the “painter of light” conveyed its ever-changing impact on the land and coast, and in doing so lay the foundations of impressionism.

To see examples of Turner’s Scarborough, such as boys catching crabs on a misty morning in the South Bay, circa 1810, you don’t have to visit the Tate, or the likes of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

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Samuel Smith’s brewery doesn’t stretch to an original but there’s a copy of one such scene in the bar of the Golden Ball overlooking the harbour where Cheetham is making his statement about the sea and the town’s fisherfolk.

He grew up in north Manchester and outings to the seaside meant Blackpool and North Wales. After university and art college, and being “ground down” by London, he returned north and through a friend discovered Scarborough. It’s held him ever since.

He sees it through an outsider’s eyes and realised that he wasn’t just drawing and painting, but recording an industry in decline. He’d seen a similar outcome in his home city and in Liverpool, producing some acclaimed work of post-industrial collapse.

Commercial fishing on the Yorkshire coast hasn’t gone that far, but the signs are ominous. In the 10 years since Cheetham and his sketch pad became a familiar sight on the fish quay, Scarborough’s fleet has diminished. That in turn has meant fewer opportunities for crewmen and in the trades which rely on their catches.

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The fishing community’s relationship with a professional artist is established now, but it took time to gain its trust. “When I first appeared with my pencil and paper there was a lot of suspicion,” said Cheetham. “They thought I was a man from the ministry checking up on their fishing quotas. The harbourmaster came to my rescue. He told them not to worry, ‘he does drawings’.”

Gradually Cheetham won them over, and acceptance has revealed itself in a number of ways. A man working in the fish-gutting shed bought one of his charcoals depicting colleagues at work. Fishermen attended a preview of one of his exhibitions and were “chuffed” to recognise themselves.

Cheetham has also been to sea, notably on one occasion sharing the perils of their work off Flamborough Head when a trawl net became snagged, and in the struggle to free it the vessel came close to capsizing.

“It gave me a scary insight into their job and environment. It’s hard, cramped, cold and dangerous.”

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Such is his commitment to social history through art, he rents the loft of a former bait shed from the council and has turned it into a studio, reached only by ladder. It’s where, not that long ago, wives and youngsters used to bait the menfolk’s lines.

The artist used to have a similar place next door but that was demolished recently to make way for car-parking – another indicator, along with additional facilities for yachtsmen and leisure craft, that the tide is turning against the fishermen.

In his 10 years there he’s seen many leave to work in the amusement arcades, or move up the coast to join craft servicing oil and gas rigs. For all his urban background he’s gained an understanding of what fishing and loss means to local families whose names are synonymous with the tradition: Mainprize, Normandale, Sheader, Jenkinson, and others.

Cheetham looks out on a tangle of nets, lobster pots, cables, and scalloping and trawling equipment, much of it rusting and disused. On this particular morning, high tide was a beautiful bottle green and he pointed to a lone boatman, the only one in Scarborough, he thinks, with a licence to catch the salmon coming inshore to breed.

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On the quay, men in oilskins were unloading crabs and lobsters caught in Filey Bay by the Cornucopia, something of a misnomer now. The days of plenty here are over, in part because of the international politics and economics governing fishing. Only three other vessels were at the fish pier, and old-timers tell Cheetham about the time when there were so many cobles and trawlers you could walk cross the harbour by stepping from boat to boat.

With his pencils, graphite, oils, and pastels he’s doing his bit to record what’s left, as well striving to pin down the ever-changing light and a rough sea in the North Bay. That was the setting he chose for a painting commissioned by the Friends of Scarborough Art Gallery.

The fishermen won’t pose for him. They say they haven’t time, and time is money. It might also be to do with their natural reticence. He has to catch them as he can, and that suits Cheetham’s approach. “I draw from life and from the heart, an observer rather than a participant. Immediacy is a challenge. I want to draw them as they are, which means working quickly to capture a movement, a natural expression, the truth of what they do. I feel very privileged to have been accepted into their world.”

Their response to him can be cloaked in teasing. “They sometimes pop into the studio and make comments. One day I was preparing a canvas and it was nothing but white. Someone said that if I added a couple of blobs I’d be sure to win the Turner Prize.

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“I’ve also been advised to cut off an ear if I want to be as good as van Gogh. I may be a struggling artist but things aren’t that desperate.”

* Andrew Cheetham is one of the artists exhibiting at the North Yorkshire Open Studios 2011 event, June 11-12 and 18-19. His work can be seen at South Street Gallery, 6-8 South Street, South Cliff, Scarborough. www.andrewcheetham.com

* The work of 125 other artists can be seen at various locations in the region. For details about Open Studios 2011 visit www.nyos.org.uk