Darlington's MP has unveiled a new piece of office art which she has commissioned from an artist she discovered when she admired a dress he had made his wife.
Ivan Chapman’s painting celebrating the past and present of the town is now hanging in pride of place in Lola McEvoy’s office in Blackwellgate.
“I’d met Yvonne and her husband Ivan when I was out doorknocking and then again at the Stockton & Darlington Railway 200th anniversary festival in September where Yvonne was wearing an absolutely stunning screen-print dress,” said Ms McEvoy at the unveiling on Wednesday.
Lola McEvoy and Ivan and Yvonne Chapman and the painting. Yvonne is wearing her dress showing Locomotion No 1 and St Cuthbert's Church
(Image: Chris Lloyd)
The dress shows Locomotion No 1 sweeping across the landscape and St Cuthbert’s Church rising majestically out of its cloud of steam.
“I asked who’d made it and she said her husband,” said Ms McEvoy.
“I was desperate for some Darlington art for the office. Most of what was on the walls I had inherited from previous MPs going back to a black and white portrait of Ted Fletcher (Darlington MP from 1964-1983).
“I wanted something about Darlington’s past and present that is joyous and colourful.”
After the big reveal, she said: “This is the first time I’ve seen it and I absolutely love it!”
All the buildings that made Darlington a Victorian powerhouse – the town clock, Pease’s statue, the Skerne bridge, the South Park bandstand, the library and the railway station – are represented along with the futuristic shapes of the new Treasury headquarters, the forthcoming STEM Centre of Excellence, the rounded college on Haughton Road and the new Bank Top station entrance with St John’s Church cleverly reflected in its glasswork.
There’s also a nod to Ms McEvoy’s past as one of the buildings in her childhood home of Westbrook Villas, the extraordinary street of Victorian villas off North Road, has been picked out.
Lola McEvoy and Ivan Chapman with the painting
(Image: Chris Lloyd)
“The difficulty was getting the balance between the old and the new,” said Ivan, who originally comes from Brotton on the east coast but after a career teaching art in Aberystwyth retired back to Yvonne’s hometown four years ago.
“I didn’t want the old buildings to dominate completely so I had to work with the colours and textures to prevent that, and I wanted to get it so that the people coming out of the North Road works, which closed in the 1960s, merge with the modern people going into the new Bank Top station.
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“I really hope people will enjoy exploring the details I’ve worked into the picture.”
Ms McEvoy, who is the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, also had a serious message as the painting was revealed in front of invited members of the town’s cultural community.
Praising what the S&DR200 festival had done for Darlington, she said: “We have to actively encourage art, to facilitate it and fund it. Underfunding of the creative sector has real time consequences, in mental health terms and in the degradation of civic pride.”