Alan Gummerson, painter/artist, printmaker, sculptor (1928 – 2020) was born at Bradford Moor. He studied art at Bradford Art College from 1945-47 and taught at Leeds Polytechnic and Leeds College of Art from 1957 until 1984, when he took early retirement.
After retirement he concentrated on his own multi-faceted art work, working from his home near Hebden Bridge. combined with work as a part-time art lecturer and art exhibition organiser,
‘Low Hill, Baildon’. Image: Kirklees Council
Locally, there have been solo exhibitions of his paintings in 1963 at the Lane Gallery, Bradford, and in 2010 at the South Square Gallery at Thornton.
Elsewhere in the UK there have also been solo exhibitions, including at St. Ives, London, Rievaulx Abbey, Cambridge, Harrogate. Oldham, and Leeds. The Dean Clough Gallery at Halifax mounted a major exhibition of his work in 2009. Vic Allen, Dean Clough’s arts director at the time, said the artist “has ranged with gleeful abandon across disciplines as varied as etching, painting, collages, ceramics, bronzes and assemblages.” He said a series of earlier shows had highlighted Alan Gummerson’s “large ‘anti-war, pro-fun’ assemblages generating spontaneous public acclaim.”
Abroad, his paintings were shown in solo exhibitions in Paris and Berlin and in group shows in other parts of Europe and in the USA.
His paintings can be found in the public art collections of the Kirklees Museums and Galleries Service and at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate.
A retrospective exhibition of his work is planned at Dean Clough Gallery in Halifax in 2021.
‘Sun Clasp. Evening light on the hill.’ Image: Mercer Gallery, Harrogate
The local newspaper, ‘Telegraph & Argus‘, featured Gummerson in an article, 2009, available at T & A
He told the newspaper at that time:
All my work is bolstered by family and amazing friends: not that they should be held responsible for my continued urge to make art nor for my inadequacies. And as for the inadequacies, they are an essential part of the results. Life would seem empty without the making.
Abstract. Image: in a private collection
Bibliography: Recent Paintings by Alan Gummerson (1963). Published by New Vision Centre Gallery.
More information about the artist: Gable Contemporary UK