Cooplands Bakery 1983
In 1983 I was awarded one of six Yorkshire Arts Association Artist in Industry residencies and I was to work, for two months, with the relatively small (200 employees) Cooplands (Doncaster) Bakery. Cooplands was a family business making bread and cakes and also cooked meats.
Quite early on in this residency I made the decision to make mostly drawings and to focus my attention on the workforce - on people at work. As I was living and working on site (sleeping at night in the board room) I was working close up with everyone else in the building . . . which is probably why my drawings tend toward portraits of fellow workers. I continued working on these drawings and paintings for about eight months . . . until a touring exhibition of the work of all six artists opened at The Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield - curated by James Hamilton.