Terry Durham
There is one letter (undated, though almost certainly from 1966) from Terry Durham to Ruth Borchard, sent from Beckenham, Kent: 'Here is the self-portrait you asked for. I do hope you are happy with it. I haven't worked this way for some years and the final painting I am very pleased with.
'I wanted you to have a piece which is recent rather than some thing which has been lying around the studio for years.'
Terry Durham was born in East Ardsley, Yorkshire in 1936, where his father was a steel worker, and his mother a mill worker. Signed 'DURHAM MARCH 66', his self-portrait was painted when he was around thirty years old. With his big, droopy 'walrus' moustache, thick mop of dark hair and blue-black fisherman-type sweater, Durham is very much a young, 'with-it' man of his time. His head is presented in a sturdy, four-square manner. His deadpan mien is self-consciously serious, even gritty in its resolute air, with evident qualities too of gentleness and sensitivity. The black, prominent pupil of his right eye confronts us forcefully; the pupil of his left eye, painted smudgy and brownish, appears to look away. The resulting stare is a little ambiguous: direct and oblique all at once.
At this time Durham was experimenting with mixed media: this picture is oil and hessian on board. The 'polo-neck' is itself composed out of a cut-out hessian fragment, its cross-hatched texture evoking the feel of chunkily-knit wool. Lower down the navy jumper is lightly painter; but around the neck, the paint thickens and becomes a solid black, endowing Durham with a 'strong-necked' character, and giving solid support for his radiant face. Though the face is itself quite neatly sculpted, the use of paint throughout is quite rawly expressionistic. The stormily painted, blue-black background (which contains touches of golden ochre as seen in his brilliant 'aura') reinforces the image of a man ruggedly at one with the elements.
In March 2003, Durham recalled: "I cannot remove myself from the boy. The boy who took the bus into Wakefield with pocket money, got off the bus in Wood Street and with eager anticipation went to the most magical place in his young heart, the Eagle Press shop in Wood Street. There the boy would buy one or two sheets of manilla paper, and he would leave into the Saturday market crowd with his prized treasure.
'What the boy made of the paper is now beyond my memory, but here I am still clutching the pen and touching the paper. The boy is still here, and although many years and many miles from Wakefield and the Eagle Press, I feel, simply, I owe it to the boy.'
As a child he felt both repressed and depressed by the drabness of his surroundings, and started painting to bring some colour and vibrancy into his life. When he was twelve he painted a portrait of Clement Atlee, and sent it to then then Prime Minister, receiving a letter of thanks, and got his picture in the local paper. As Paul Bareham has written (in 2009), 'As soon as he was old enough he left Yorkshire and drifted around the country, living the beatnik dream, painting when he could, no ties, no plans, taking it as it came. Finding himself in London just before it started swinging, Terry started studying painting in earnest [early inspirations were Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse and Klee; his later paintings were inspired very much by the examples of Australian Aboriginal, native American and tribal African art] but also began writing lyrics and poems and performing the same at various happenings across the capital. In 1969, he recorded his only album as a solo artist, The Crystal Telephone... a wonderful album that provides a variety of musical settings for Terry's poetry as recited... in his gentle earnest voice.'
Mostly self-taught, Durham had attended the Leeds College of Art, working in a Wakefield mill in the mornings so he could attned the college in the afternoons. However, he left the college after a year, finding it stifling and restrictive, and went to work in a quarry. In 1960 at the age of twenty-four he and his wife moved to St Mary, Isles of Scilly, for two years, working in a hotel there, his paintings inspired by the rugged island landscape and clement climate. On the back of his 1960 solo album, it reads: 'While on the Scilly Isles he discovered he had a remarkable affinity for primitive objects and ancient cultures. This along with the remoteness of the islands, the celtic [sic] overtones of the local legends, the writings of Carl Jung and William Blake, and the painting and writing of Paul Klee, enabled him to evolve the philosophy of life and the visual approach to painting which he still retains today. In 1961... he returned to Yorkshire where he continued to progress and in 1962 he won the Thomas Jones Bequest awarded by the Arts Council of Great Britain to the most promising young painter of the year. This enabled him to move to Beckenham, Kent, where he is still living.'
By the mid 60s, Durham was immersed in the hip, alternative London arts and music scene. He became acquainted with the likes of the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, and got to know the young David Bowie (originally Jones), who lived nearby. His Decca (Deram label) LP, The Crystal Telephone, featuring ten of his compositions (his lyrics and vocals complemented by musical arrangements from John Coleman, featuring a mix of jazz, blues and rock) – and re-issued in 2005 by Vocalion – has more recently become something of a cult album, appreciated for his partly sung, partly spoken lyrics, about which a perceptive fan in 2005 wrote, 'Terry delivers a set of occasionally surreal, occasionally gritty monologues, backed by a jazz band who veer from the smooth to the experimental. Special mentions are reserved for Dreams Of Tomorrow - bluesy and grainy - Stills From A Light Night Movie which is like listening to a groovy 60s British drama soundtrack with dialogue included, and the title track, the closest Terry gets to singing. Imagine if Kerouac and the Beats came from North Yorkshire, this is probably what they'd have sounded like.'
Here are some of the lyrics of the track Crystal Telephone:
As I sit alone the crystal telephone begins to ring
Dreamtime coming
Roaming love birds sing
And the girl with coloured hair is coming home.
A time for loving
And there's a flower in the sky...
But not often...
Inside the ring, concrete fingers bring a threat to a small kingdom.
A time for leaving.
And golden is the back of the tiger
And still softer
A time for dreaming
And early morning drew is drunk at the nocturnal meeting...
As I sit alone the crystal telephone begins to ring
Dreamtime coming
Roaming love birds sing
And the girl with coloured hair is coming home.
A time for questions.
And the mirror on the wall reflects the shell...
But not today...
Ask the ancient 'otel
The reasons why the dreamweaver casts his spell.
A time for growing
As the minds of the young take wing
In the asphalt sky
And the flames in my mind
Riding the sky with a question
The question remains the answer...
As I sit alone the crystal telephone begins to ring
Dreamtime coming
Roaming love birds sing
And the girl with coloured hair is coming home
A time for loving
A time for leaving
A time for questions
A time for growing
A time for loving
A time for leaving...
Durham's early exhibitions brought him into the media spotlight, attracting the interest of figures like Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones and the novelist Muriel Spark. Some of the titles of Durham's paintings in his 1969 one-man show at the Queen Square Gallery in Leeds, indicate his spiritual, occult and psychedelic interests at the time: To the Pyramid, Mystic Panel, Guardians of the Holy Circle, Four Signs to the Cross. In a special 1965 'catalogue of painters who support the NICHOLAS TREADWELL GALLERIES', a dark-haired, bearded Durham was one of eighteen painters whose photograph was illustrated in black-and-white. Marek Zulawski (.q.v.) was another. Ruth Borchard kept a catalogue for one of Durham's shows with Nicholas Treadwell in London, probably dating from 1966. The titles of the paintings are even more lyrical and trippy even than in his 1965 Leeds show. They include Shamon breathing flowers, Migration to the Sun, Bright blaze of crystal. The catalogue also notes that Durham's LP Crystal Telephone 'will be played at intervals during the exhibition'.
The catalogue cover illustrates, in black-and-white, a painting in oil and hessian on board. The roughly painted hessian has been cut out to appear somewhat like a rocky landscape; above, in the 'sky', is the simplified, abstracted form of a bird in flight. Surreal, sinuous, delicate shapes – an alchemical mix of plant, mineral and human bodily forms perhaps – appear to sprout all over the hessian inscape. Durham's universe, as seen here, is mystically playful – kindred in spirit to the creations of Max Ernst and Klee.
Judging by the notes she has written all over the catalogue, Ruth was evidently most inspired by this show. She singles out Durham's 'alive and odd shapes, flowerlike or snakelike or even [like] animals and people; the dinosaur-like creatures of [one picture, Suntime] are childlike.' Another picture, Morning weaving the sun, she find 'Biblical' with its 'Tree of Life, golden sun'. She describes the content of the paintings: 'animals, flowers, dreams, mountains, snakes, moons, animals below the ground, almost crushed by the earth.' She admires Durham's 'brilliant concentration of colour'.
In a brief introductory catalogue essay for Durham's 1963 exhibition at London's New Vision Centre, Henry Graham wrote: 'One comes across these pictures with the feeling that after a little study, it will be possible to go and find the magic hoard of gold, guarded by the dragon. Or discover under the secret mandala, clues that will lead to the body of the great king.'
The artist himself has written:
My paintings speak of ancient myths, of deserts and half moons.
They speak of yesterday's times, of silences and the winds,
Of suns and labyrinths, of birds and mythical creatures.
They speak of surfaces worn by time, and of the Shaman's drum.
My paintings speak of me.
A painting by Durham appeared and was discussed by his friend the mathematician, science historian and author Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974), in an episode of his acclaimed 1973 BBC television series The Ascent of Man – a thirteen-part documentary about human history through analysis of scientific endeavour – and in the accompanying book of the same title. Bronowski wrote: "The first question we ask is, is the human brain a better computer - a more complex computer? Of course, artists in particular tend to think of the brain as a computer. So in his "Portrait of Dr Bronowski" Terry Durham has symbols of the spectrum and the computer, because that is how an artist imagines a scientist's brain."
In 1976, Durham returned to live in Yorkshire, but continued to exhibit in London and further afield. Alongside his painting, from the late 70s he made a number of children's books based on Yorkshire 'character's he encountered, and in 1992 a series of 'forest folk sculptures at his studio in the Walkley Clogs complex, Mytholmroyd' (according to David Buckman).
A website devoted to his art records that in '1993, Terry moved with his family to the Algarve, southern Portugal, where he lived for 11 years, and was particularly inspired by the people, colours, landscape and architecture. During his time there, in addition to painting professionally, he had many successful exhibitions, was employed regularly as a mural painter and, going back to his musical roots of the 1960-70s, performed as vocalist for a rock and blues band. With Portugal as his base, he also had several international exhibitions, including five in Berlin and one on the island of Jersey.
'In 2003, Terry moved to Porto Seguro in the Bahia municipality of north-east Brazil where the vibrant colours, wildlife and tribal cultures played a significant part in the numerous paintings and sketches he would complete during his time there and in the future.
'In 2007, Terry travelled from Brazil to Alora, a town in the province of Malaga, Andalucia, Spain, where he was to spend his later years. Alora became very close to Terry’s heart and the town significantly inspired his artwork and writing.' An icon-style painting Alora Madonna is remarkable for the truly minuscule scale of the visage of the Holy Virgin, and for the way it sets aside the intricately patterned image of the golden statuesque Madonna (with a garment of pinks and whites, its free strokes flowing down like some kind of mystic waterfall) against an austerely composed abstracted background – a large rectangle of gorgeously mottled purple against two tall strips of speckled grey. Elements of stark, even severe modernity and a grand archaic vision marry with notable originality in this picture.
'Terry died peacefully at the age of 77 on 6th December 2013 and is interred in Alora cemetery. Terry leaves behind two children, a son Nick and a daughter Charley.'
