"In 1981 I applied for and was eventually offered a place on an arts and industry scheme run by the Yorkshire Arts Association and the Arts Council. Quite suddenly I found myself heading North to start work as artist-in-residence at Maltby Colliery in Yorkshire. The next two months were life-changing as I was compelled to face the consequence of my decision to find an alternative leftist practice that connected with people. I had felt an acute sense of art’s irrelevance to life as it is lived by the great majority - but I had little experience of that life. I had a lot to learn.

My ignorance was compounded by my illusion that the word ‘artist’ signified a kind of anomalous status which refused category definition. I had a vague sense that I was a south- erner, and a Bristolian, but my identity was that of artist. But regional difference was eclipsed by class - it was obvious that as soon as I spoke my accent betrayed me. I was a southerner - but class was inescapable. So my culture shock was compounded by the realisa- tion that I had to deal not simply with people’s expectation of what an artist was - probably a bit weird - but also with their perception that I was posh (notwithstanding the suspicion that all northerners see all southerners as posh).

As I was introduced and shown around Maltby I felt overwhelmed by both the austerity and the social warmth of the places and people. Learning to interact with people who were so warm and open was an intense experience - there was an acute sense of being assessed as a human being - never mind artist and southerner - but also a sense that they were accepting and open - and they expected that to be reciprocated. I had to learn to let my guard down and be real.

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Maltby had a busy high street but most of it comprised a council estate which sprawled across a windy hill. It was a place of coal dust, smoke and beer. There was an almost com- plete absence of cars (though I soon discovered that the bus service in South Yorkshire was one of the best in the country).
When I was shown around the pit I noticed enamel paintings of the ‘Wild West’ on the locker doors, which my guides explained were scenes of Maltby life by ‘our artist big Davey’. Dave Brennan was a conspicuous figure, an almost legendary presence in the pit. I began to under- stand that our meeting was much anticipated. After a few days our paths crossed. Big Dave was indeed a big man, a Scot, with hands the size of dinner plates, a big smile and a ready chuckle.
Despite our huge and obvious differences we felt an immediate bond as fellow artists.
He was untrained, but had drawn a strip cartoon for the Yorkshire miner for many years. He was a ‘natural’ - his drawings direct, utterly unselfconscious, with a raw expressiveness
He was one of many Scots who moved down to Yorkshire when their pits were closed. He had started hewing coal by hand aged sixteen lying on his side in a two foot seam under the North Sea. Dave was a popular figure, politically radical and combative, known for his witty and acerbic cartoons but also as a voluble presence in meetings. He also had a habit of getting up on stage in his stetson at the Miners Institute or the Caledonian club and singing his ver- sions of Johnny Cash songs - the locations and characters changed to Maltby: “Wanted Man up in the Cally, wanted man down in the Stute...” as well as ‘Dangerous Dan McGrew’ by Hank Snow - “he looked like a man with a foot in the grave...” which always got the miners cheering and stomping. Dave was also a devoted aficionado of Rabby Burns, able to fluently recite many of his poems.

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Dave was living with one of his sons - the other son and his wife having returned to their hometown of Alloa - so he had a spare room, where I stayed for the duration of the residency in the winter and spring of 1981. The Yorkshire miners kept quite cozy even chintzy homes, but the Scots in my experience lived in much sparser conditions. The wind blew through Dave’s front door and out the back, and what had once been the carpet was shiny black. I felt that his living conditions were to an extent a badge of honour - a sign that they were hardy, tough people more at home in the miner’s institute or the pub than at home sipping a cup of tea.

I went underground with the miners for a half shift every day and worked the rest of the time in the improvised studio the pit carpenters knocked up for me in an old building on the pit- top. Dave would come through my studio when he came off shift to see what I was doing. On one occasion he said 'good to see you on 27’s' - and I said 'Eh? Did I see you?' - and he laughed and said ‘aye you did - we had a chat!’ In the general chaos and blackness I hadn’t even realised I was talking to him

Maltby was a deep mine - 900 yards from surface to pit bottom. Going down the first time, crammed into the cage with the miners, was pretty terrifying. The men were hard but their wit and humour softened their edges, and in some coded way they were protective - teasing but reassuring. We waited as the last man squeezed in, then a bell rang, the mesh gates slammed shut and the cage dropped like a stone, in pitch darkness, shaking and crashing as it descend- ed for what felt like five minutes (on reflection it probably was) nothing but steel mesh be- tween you and rock, fleetingly illuminated by cap lamps. At the pit bottom miners got on to small trains which took them off to different coal faces, sometimes six miles apart. The little train bucketed along wide lit tunnels until it reached its terminus where suddenly there was total darkness. It was a darkness few will have experienced, A complete absence of ambient light.

We turned off into what was known as a Gate - a tunnel - the darkness punctuated only by cap lamps and the occasional roof light at intersections. As we got further in the going be- came more difficult. In places the ground pushed up and the roof partially collapsed, and we had to clamber or crawl over piles of rubble, ducking where jagged pieces of corrugated iron protruded, sometimes squeezing between steel props or baulks of timber. After maybe half an hour the gate opened out into a spectacular chaos of men machines and lights where the coal face and the gate intersected. A huge boring machine called a Dosco was drilling into rock, pushing the gate forward, and men were digging with shovels and pick-axes, laying brick walls, operating machines, crawling between the hydraulic props operating the coal cutter

and moving them forward as the coal was cut and channeled away onto the conveyors, the ground crushing in behind the props.
The distances were much greater than I had expected - the particular coalface where I went to draw quite often, 27’s - was three miles from pit-bottom. Occasionally we would ride the coal conveyors - highly dangerous and illegal. My first lesson was pretty hairy. Kevin, a shop steward - little more than a lad - had been delegated to show me around. He decided we would go the quick way. I found myself kneeling on the coal conveyor, clinging on for dear life as it rushed swaying and bumping through the darkness, then suddenly Kevin looked back and shouted “get ready - when we get near that light up ahead - Jump!”. If you got it wrong you’d be mangled. Kevin went on to become an MP and later a Labour peer, but was seen as having changed sides and was never a popular man in Maltby.

The men operating machines at the coal face crawled between massive hydraulic pit-props in a space maybe three foot high, usually stripped almost naked, their great hippo-like bodies gleaming black with sweat and coal dust. It was not uncommon for men to wear their wives knickers in the intense heat. Not so long ago I reminded Dave about that somewhat idio- syncratic tradition and asked if it was true, or a figment of my perverted imagination - he said ‘Oh aye we did do that - they’re cooler’. Even when it was snowing outside (which it was at at times whilst I was there) it was very hot at the coal face.

We drank at the miners working men’s clubs - the Miners Institute, the Caledonian Club and the Catholic club - known as the Stute, the Cally and the Catholic - usually at a ratio of four pints per miner and one for me. A few up the Stute, down to the Catholic for a few, then up to the Cally - then maybe back down to the Stute.

Dave introduced me to coal and I introduced him to charcoal. He educated me about the his- tory, workings and culture of coal mines and miners. I introduced him to charcoal, gave him a few tips and encouraged him to work big. Really big. He relished it. I guess being familiar with the black stuff must have helped. His drawings are often big brutal and dramatic - some- times soft and sad. But always they have a powerful dramatic edge - sometimes tinged with humour. I helped Dave put on a couple of shows at the Miners Institute and the Wesley Cen- tre in Maltby.

When I left Maltby the miners presented me with a beautiful bronze sculpture of a miner.

I visited the picket line at Maltby in 1984, and accompanied Dave on the big miners march from Trafalgar Square to Parliament. We saw Scargill speak and I introduced my baby son, Arthur, to him, lifting him up to a mutual friend who was with Scargill by the Lions, who passed him to Arthur, who gave him a kiss. I think my son is still uncertain which king Arthur he is named after.

We remained in touch and Dave visited us in London from time to time. After much badger- ing and cajoling I succeeded in getting tickets for the National Theatre’s production of Pit- men Painters, about the Ashington group of miners who learned to paint and produced work of extraordinary quality. After the performance we went backstage to talk to the actors. They were evidently pleased to meet a real miner - and Dave was clearly very pleased to meet the blokes pretending to be miners.

I did many mixed media drawings and paintings at Maltby using ink, charcoal and carbon pencil, working from pencil drawings done from observation underground. There was a touring exhibition of work done by artists who had taken part in the Arts Council artist-in-in- dustry scheme of which my residency in Maltby was part.

Dave made a speech at my wedding in Tenby - he didn’t spare me. He described how after he got off his shift one day he asked me what I had been doing. I said well, I worked, then I went for a walk. Dave addressed the audience thus: - “I was working down the pit - and he went for a walk! he went for a walk!” It's true, I had been deeply involved in a five foot drawing and I needed to clear my head. But there is no way of reconciling these two polarities. The notions of honest toil as authentic work and intellectual work as self-indulgent are irreconcil- able - as are the cool artists dressed in black in brightly lit white spaces - and blackened sweating miners in hot dark spaces deep under the ground.

Dave was a dear friend. We remained in touch by phone and letter for the last forty four years. I have kept all the elaborately drawn envelopes from all his letters.

Maltby was one of the last mines to close in 2013. Not long ago I went back to Rotherham to deliver the eulogy at Dave’s funeral. It was a sad affair. There was palpable feeling that they had lost the pillar of their community. Nobody drank much."

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