FORMER mayor of Warrington Geoff Settle set out to challenge the claim by a National newspaper that the town doesn’t care about its heritage by organising the 1stDigital Art Heritage Competition for charity.
It involved local amateur artists and photographers submitting paintings and photograph of buildings and structures from across the Borough and resulted in thirty seven entries.
The entries are still available to view in an album on the Mayor of Warrington’s Facebook page.
Twenty-four of them were paintings that went on display for a few weeks at the MacIntyre Learning Centre “The Best of Northern Art” in Bridge Street and proved very popular.
Winners of both categories were husband and wife David and Janet Tanner. Janet had photographed a sunset from the Fiddler’s Ferry Yacht Club that in turn inspired David to paint a watercolour of the composition.
She said: “I was heading back to the car when I turned and saw a lovely sunset. Luckily for me I had my camera and captured that picture without a thought.”
She showed David the photograph when they got home and he instantly said that it would make a great watercolour painting.
David is a student of Sankey Artist Sue Cartwright and completed the painting during a couple of the classes with some advice from Sue. He had never entered an art competition before.
“I wasn’t sure if it was what they wanted so I sent an image of the painting and they said the Fiddler’s Ferry Towers were an iconic structure,” said David.
“I did panic a bit when I found out that it was in the final because it wasn’t framed and the paintings were already starting to go up on display.
“I then received an even greater surprise when it was hung in the gallery and Janet phoned me to say that somebody wanted to buy it and what price had I in mind. I was on a walking high up in the Northumberland Hills miles from anywhere.”
Geoff admitted he was delighted for the artists, many of whom had never displayed their work before. Three paintings are now subject to offers.
“The standard has been excellent as have the heritage subjects chosen,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect from on-line voting but it worked very well and was exciting to watch. We received a grand total of 1,170 votes.” The results as follows:
Painting Competition:
1st – David Tanner – Sankey Canal and Fiddler’s Ferry Towers
2nd – John Spanton – “Latchford Locks and Railway Bridge”
3rd – Les Hodgkinson – Mersey Ferry Snowdrop
Photographic Competition:
1st – Janet Tanner – Evening Light, Fiddler’s Ferry
2nd – Geoff Settle – Autism Awareness Day Fountain
3rd – Neil Stanley – Above the Tracks
