Scenes and characters of Market Harborough
A talk by Franklyn J Scott, alternatively known to us as ‘Frank,’ our club President.
As a child Frank was inspired by a TV program called Adrian Hill’s Sunday morning sketch club. He entered a pencil sketch of a junk shop and he won first prize. This inspired him to study art. Educated in Leicester at Gateway School, and then the attached college of art. He gained a degree in graphic design. His first job involved printing where he worked in a studio in Oxford Street. He moved on to be a designer in Syston, display manager for North Eastern Gas, teacher in Oadby, to running his own sign writing business and finally to date a free lance artist.
On a his return from Australia, he decided to do a series of pictures of Market Harborough. In the painting of the old grammar school and church you will notice the shadow on the TSB wall is wrong with the time on the church clock, this was the start of deliberate mistakes in all the following Market Harborough paintings. Jim Divine carries a Tesco shopping bag, Jim never shopped in Tesco! Eric Waterfield's bicycle appears in every picture, certainly Frank knows all the local characters idiosyncrasies and evan included Ali Bunce’s foot in one picture! Richard Martin (Martin’s pet shop) approached Frank to paint the picture of Church Street. A print of one of these was presented to a visiting dignitary and now hangs in the Whitehouse in America. These paintings are evidence of how Market Harborough has changed since the 1990’s.
This is only one small aspect of Franks work, scenes of Market Harborough, along with landscape paintings and night scenes can be found on his website www.fjscott.co.uk/
Thank you Frank for such an interesting and informative evening.
weighing in at 7lb 13oz.
