Ron Sturgess - July 2007
Ron was 70 years of age when he first put pastel to paper in April 2006. He had no formal training in art and admits his last artistic effort was in 1951 at school. Neither does his professional background indicate any hidden artistic talent. Following National Service in the Pay Corps, from 1953 to 1955, Ron went to work in the fashion industry, finally running knitting factories in London and Leicester. He was involved in the manufacturing and distribution rather than the design.
Ron arrived in Spain with his wife Leonie in October 2003. They rented accommodation whilst they waited for their own property to be finished. Two years ago, bored, Ron picked up a pencil and started drawing. Then he tried watercolours. Meanwhile the couple joined ICE and Ron discovered John Wright’s art class. He joined initially to learn ‘how to do’ watercolours.
The main benefits of the art class as far as Ron is concerned is the atmosphere and the collaborative way the group work on any project, all learning from one another. Ron says that he does not understand some of the more modern works and cannot imagine how the artist arrives at the finished canvas. On the other hand many of the artists cannot do what Ron does.
Ron does pastels. His first, ‘Man and Dog’, was drawn in April 2006. Since then he has produced over twenty works ranging from landscapes, which he particularly likes, to still life to figures. His progression from a very typical ‘flat’ pastel to three-dimensional work with body has been he admits, self taught.
Opinions differ but the work that clearly shows where Ron is going and probably his best to date is entitled ‘Spanish Gold’. It is a drawing of cupped hands holding olives reaching out from within the canvas. The hands clearly belong to a man, one who has worked the land for decades and can no longer remove engrained dirt from nails and skin. The olives are ripe, fresh and with a ‘bloom’. What Ron has achieved here with pastels is normally the preserve of the oil painter.
Inspiration for his work comes from two areas, his own passion and the ‘Old Masters’ whose work Ron would like to emulate but none of his progress to date would have been possible without John and the other students. Ron maintains that without John’s appraisals and his words of encouragement, ‘You can do it my boy’, every work would have been an unfinished challenge.