Don’t miss ‘Country Days’ exhibition focusing in and around Wisbech 1970s to 2024

06:00, 09 November 2024

Wisbech and Fenland Museum's November/December exhibition ‘Country Days’ puts 11 previously unseen big, bold paintings by retired Thomas Clarkson art teacher David Housden on display.

David came to the Fens to teach at Queens Girls School in 1975 and has never left the area, or stopped painting scenes from his life here as he moved from country into town and back.

He said: “Moving into a house near Gorefield in the 70s with my brother, I couldn't believe how isolated it felt – and the Wisbech flood of 1978 brought home how vulnerable we are here to the forces of nature.

“The town intrigued me – I had a one-man exhibition in the 1980s here at the Museum of my pictures of the alleyways in Wisbech, all these mysterious little corners and passages that get the imagination working. I was living in town on the South Brink by that time.

“I moved out to our present home in a fen village nearby with my partner Chrissie in 1991. I hadn't shown my work since the 80s.

“It's here, in 2020, shielding during Covid, that I put images of my more recent paintings on Facebook and then X (Twitter), and sparked renewed interest. So this year I've had two paintings at the new Wisbech Gallery, my town paintings were on show at Peckover House, and now the country ones are at the Museum.”

Snowdrift (with glasses): David (right) with brother Chris outside Hill House in Gorefield, where they lived in the 1970s.

The 11 canvases in ‘Country Days’, all painted since 2020, are not for sale, but prints and postcards can be purchased at the Museum exhibition from Wednesday, November 13 until Thursday, December 21 during Museum open hours, 10-4 Wednesday to Saturday each week. A fifth of the money raised will go to Museum funds.