For a short while final week, the complete works of artist George Westren have been sat in a skip, heading for the garbage dump. A couple of hours later, nonetheless, they usually have been going viral on social media, with individuals the world over marvelling at his approach and enquiring as to how they could purchase a number of the late artist’s work.
None of this might have been doable if it wasn’t for the actions of “nosy neighbour” Alan Warburton. Warburton had been left saddened throughout lockdown by the information that Westren, his shy upstairs neighbour of six years, had died alone in his flat. Final week, after listening to removing males emptying out the place, he was horrified to see lots of of Westren’s drawings and work bagged up and headed for the tip.
“I couldn’t reserve it all,” he says from his Spitalfields flat, the place Westren’s collected works presently reside. “The removing males have been in a rush to get the job performed. However I noticed George’s portfolio mendacity within the skip and managed to get that. There have been greater than 150 drawings in there.”
And what drawings. Warburton is an artist himself, working in video and animation, and he couldn’t imagine the standard of Westren’s items. They have been virtually all op-art drawings and work, geometric shapes closely influenced by the British artist Bridget Riley. “Seeing the precision, understanding how tough it's to do what he’s performed, I used to be actually impressed,” says Warbuton. “This was correctly superb, skilled high quality work. I can think about him upstairs, engaged on it for weeks, it being his entire life.”
Even so, he didn’t anticipate the massive response that adopted when he took to Twitter to submit a picture of his haul with the phrases: “Clearance firm arrived this morning and have been about to chuck lots of of gorgeous op-art drawings away”. Celebrities corresponding to tennis star Martina Navratilova helped unfold the story (“Wonderful artwork … positively should be saved!” she stated), whereas others who knew Westren bought in contact to assist Warburton piece collectively the life story of the neighbour he barely knew. It quickly turned clear that Westren had had a troubled life, marked by durations of homelessness and alcoholism. But artwork had been his salvation. He seems to have first began drawing after a stint in rehab in 1999, and was believed to have added color to his work after lastly overcoming his habit. “Among the titles are so lovely,” notes Warburton. “My favorite is named Star Of Hope.”
Westren was a real outsider artist – his chosen medium was felt-tip pen, presumably as a result of it was inexpensive. However a number of the compositions are intricate and adventurous, involving complicated star designs and diagonals. Did Westren have a background in maths or engineering? Was, as some Twitter customers have prompt, his proximity to the African materials on Petticoat Lane market an affect on his color schemes? Warburton continues to be filling in lots of blanks.
Kim Noble, an artist and chief of the humanities collective in Islington that Westren was part of, says: “Artwork saved George’s life. When he was homeless he as soon as took shelter from the rain in an artwork gallery and it occurred to be a Bridget Riley exhibition. One thing in these works impressed George to select up a pen and attempt to replicate these photographs.”
Noble remembers his pupil as a softly spoken gentleman with a pointy sense of humour. “However he didn’t want or need instructing. He simply needed to attract these geometric patterns over and over. He would attend the artwork group as soon as per week for practically 20 years till it was closed down, at all times together with his artwork portfolio which he took all over the place – even when he typically left it on the bus! He was so devoted to that artwork collective and his artwork.”
Specifically, Noble remembers a personal view for his personal work in London. “George got here alongside and, though a quiet man, he proceeded to carry courtroom with everybody, opening up his portfolio, displaying anybody and everybody his drawings. Folks have been actually taken by him by the tip of the night – I believe they forgot it was really my work on show!” Each Noble and Warburton are assured that Westren would have beloved for his paintings to have been shared and so broadly admired.
Now Warburton hopes to do his neighbour justice by placing on a present of his work. He has already discovered an organization to scan 30 of one of the best photographs and he plans to promote these prints to fund a small memorial present. He additionally hopes to search out somebody who can body and protect the works correctly. “I don’t personal the work, I’m solely a brief custodian,” he's eager to emphasize.
The expertise has left him considering deeply about life, legacies and loneliness. Earlier than Westren died, Warburton knew him merely because the “candy previous man” upstairs. He would typically see him coming and going and surprise what his life concerned. “I believed perhaps he was a journalist,” he says. Discovering out that he was a fellow artist, and that the pair might probably have been associates quite than simply acquaintances who shared the occasional phrase, has led Warburton to consider the larger image.
“There are shy individuals in our communities: mild, solitary individuals who in all probability received’t attain out for assist even when they want it. And to suppose that I used to be so shut and we had a lot in widespread. So I believe that’s why I see a kindred spirit in George, and I hope others can see that too.”
George Westren’s prints are available for purchase.
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