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McGuinness, Tom
b. 1926, County Durham, England; d. 2006, Bishop Auckland, England
Closing Time, 1963 Oil on board, 61 x 105.5 cm Collection: National Coal Mining Museum for England, Wakefield
McGuinness joined the Sketching Club of the Spennymoor Settlement in the late 1940s. Inspired by the advice of the Settlement’s Warden Bill Farrell to ‘paint what you know’, he did so, but with great originality. He laboured in County Durham’s deep and drift mines for most of his working life, having been a Bevin Boy in 1944, compulsorily conscripted to the coal industry. He was made redundant in 1983. He painted from experience the life of the miner below and above ground – a world that changed rapidly during his lifetime. Starting to use oils in the 1950s, he added glazes which give his paintings, like this scene of men leaving the pub at closing time and making their shaky way to the typical pit village terrace, an eerie, luminous quality. DA