Oliver Kilbourn

Oliver Percival Kilbourn (6 October 1904 – April 1993) was a British coal miner, painter, and founding member of the Ashington Group.

Widely considered to be the group's best-known artist, Kilbourn used the experiences that he had gained while working in the mines and represented them in his art work. His main contribution to the Ashington Group was his focus on Modern art.

Early life and family

Kilbourn was born in 75 Chestnut Street, Ashington, and was the fifth child of James Smith Kilbourn and Mary Hannah Chilton. After attending elementary school, he began working as a miner at the Duke pit, Ashington, three days after his thirteenth birthday. When Kilbourn was eleven, his father had an accident in the pit and damaged his back. He never worked again. Kilbourn was to become the "breadwinner more or less, maintaining the whole family on fourteen shillings a week till [his] sisters got jobs."

Coal mining

Kilbourn worked at the Duke pit for eleven years until its closure. William Feaver writes that after the Duke pit closed, "Kilbourn moved to the nearby Ellington collier, where he became a coalface drawer aged twenty-four. He remained at Ellington for the rest of his working life, becoming a salvage drawer during the Second World War and a wasteman, responsible for the maintenance of the mine's airways." Kilbourn retired from mining in 1968.

Artwork

Starting around the mid-1920s, Kilbourn "attended tutorial class organized by the Ashington Miners' Union and then the WEA and it was through this route that he enrolled on Robert Lyon's art appreciation course in October 1934."

In the course, the Ashington Group focused on the history of art as well as their own setting and way of life: coal. While drawing heavily from the conditions of the coal mines and the coal miner's lifestyle, Kilbourn produced art work that reflected his experiences.

Seven years after attending an exhibition in Durham, Kilbourn considered creating a visual memoir of his experiences, "starting as a pom-pom boy on the compressed air coal-cutting machines in 1917, going on to be a putter-lad, a coal face drawer, a salvage drawer and a wasteman." During development of his project, "the memories were directed into detailed narrative." Kilbourn credits French painter Cézanne with "opening new avenues of experience to the artistic sense" and giving a "fuller meaning of artistic expression."

Notable exhibitions

Woodhorn Museum and Northumberland Archives Midland Group, Nottingham, 1977: 'My Life as a Pitman'

Notable works

Bait Time Building Air Raid Shelters Coal Face Drawers Dawn-Ashington Colliery Drilling Shot-Hole by Hand Duke Street 2am Ellington Pit Yard End of Shift Half-Time at the Rec (welfare) Miner Setting in Low Seam Pithead Baths Progging the Mat The Hermit The Playground