Lecturer Robert McManners, The Arts Society Grantham

Why did miners paint the mines? For almost 200 years coal was to power the industrialisation of Britain – the first nation to experience its ‘industrial revolution’. Coalmining changed landscapes, working practices, and the demography of towns and spawned the many other heavy industries that changed society for ever. The mines were a filthy cacophony of dangerous claustrophobic tunnels swathed in a blinding darkness, yet, from these desperate conditions emerged many men who found a beauty and a majesty both underground and in the pit yard that they wanted to express in art. We find no similar bodies of experiential work from the other heavy industries, such steel making or ship-building, which surely must have been more persuasive to the artist’s eye than the arcane underworld of the miner. But the coalminer had more to tell. This is experiential art – what it felt like to be a miner. Who better to tell the tale? Nor did the story just end at the pit gates. Mining artists take us to their homes and their communities and totally absorb us in their whole way of life. Some moved on to become professional artists but none forgot their main inspiration and have left us with a uniquely powerful first hand record of a mighty, all consuming industry – now consigned to history.