A University of Worcester teaching student and former professional artist is putting on a free exhibition of his artwork, which focuses on a famous Worcester landmark.
Father-of-two Jonathan Dukes, who was inspired to become an art teacher after teaching his own children in the Covid-19 lockdown, will be showcasing his landscape paintings of the Crookbarrow hill tree, a local landmark seen at junction 7 of the M5.
The exhibition, titled British Birds, British Landscapes, combines Jonathan’s artwork with wife Sarah’s British wire bird sculptures. The exhibition is at The Artery, in Arches 28 and 29 (near The Hive), in Worcester, from Saturday, April 12 to Thursday, April 17.
Although both Jonathan and Sarah, who is herself a teacher, have exhibited their work before, including in an exhibition for the Royal Society of Birmingham Artists, this is the first time they have brought their work together.
Jonathan did a Fine Art degree back in the 1990s and went on to work in animation and comic book illustration in London for five years. He moved back to Worcester and has since worked freelance as an illustrator and garden designer. But it was the Covid-19 lockdown that changed everything.
“I started to, like many people, rethink what I wanted to do. I was having to homeschool my children and things started to click together,” said the 48-year-old, of east Worcester. “It was a very strange period but I was thinking, actually I’ve got quite a lot of knowledge about art, and I was making lessons at home quite interesting for them so that then put me on to the idea of becoming a teacher.”
Before becoming a teacher Jonathan wanted to complete a Master’s, so took the MA Creative Media course at the University of Worcester. He has stayed on to complete his PGCE Art to enable him to go into teaching.
Crookbarrow hill, also known as Whittington Tump, was the focus for Jonathan’s Master’s and he has focused on it over the last two years, producing etchings, silk screen prints, sketches, watercolours and pen and ink drawings. He was invited to display his work at the University’s Art House building, in Castle Street, and the feedback from locals who recognised the hill persuaded him to hold this exhibition.
“People use it as a sign to come off the motorway” he said. “It’s more of a sign than the actual signposts are and a lot of people have different names for it – sometimes it’s ‘homely hill’, or ‘almost home hill’, or ‘halfway hill’, but it’s quite embedded as a Worcestershire landmark and people are very fond of it. I think one of the reasons is not only does it signify them coming home, but also it looks like a cartoon, like a children’s drawing of a hill. It’s perfectly symmetrical and there’s a single tree standing right on top of it.”
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