Clivager Gorge , Lancashire Painting

ROB MILLER

PAINTINGS

CLIVAGER GORGE SERIES

acrylic on canvas

70x70cm

work number 2

I started this series of work around and about ten years ago soon after I read Ted Hughes poems on the last Dukedom of Elmet the last separate fiefdom in Britain apart from Brock on Tweed. Hughes writes about Clivager as a landlocked mass amidst a sea of open moor, whose only entry is through steep sided gorges.

It’s a very hard but I think beautiful place much ravaged by time with abandoned mine workings dating back before roman times and into the 1970’s when war between Scargill and Thatchers politics resulted in the clearance the workers out of towns like Bacup a proud Pennine town that has not yet recovered from those days.

A second thing of interest is that some of my ancestors were brought up there, the greenwoods who lived in some farms at the top end of clivager and who ran a haulage firm. A great Uncle who was killed by a black horse called Satan, my great aunt who died an alcoholic and my grandma. My cousins Irene and George still live nearby in Burnley.

The paintings are in acrylic on canvas, I’ve textured them and over painted the texture to try and replicate the feelings of the layers of time that have wrought the strange hills, and lumps and bumps that can be seen along the valley.

The work is 70 x 70 cm framed and is currently on the wall at the

Wensley gallery Ramsbottom Lancashire

http://www.wensleygallery.co.uk/Cv27s/Miller.R.htm
At an affordable price of just under £400.

robartmiller@yahoo.co.uk