Tunbridge Wells, Kent – A spa town enveloped with historical Georgian charm and big hair.
I’m currently steeping myself into the wonderful and strange history of this place as I’m working towards an art exhibition inspired by Tunbridge Wells which will showcase at the Spa Galleries on the Pantiles April 2023.
If you’ve heard of Tunbridge Wells, the name may summon thoughts of tweed garments, elbow patches and scuffed suede shoes. If you have not heard of TW, it is bigger, more varied and a little more exciting around the edges than you might expect.
Tunbridge Wells’ best known landmark is perhaps ‘The Pantiles’, a beautiful colonnade of shops and cafes that lead toward the famous Well, where you can sample the waters of the Chalybeate Spring discovered 400 years ago by a thirsty nobleman. The pillared walkways parallel down the avenue, and above them, the horizon line of irregular roofs and their ramshackle affair with the roof next door create a timeless visual of a quaint architectural step – back in time.
The Pantiles – again, is now a buzzing continental-style promenade, with a myriad of pleasure seekers of all ages, enjoying the many unique shops, bars and restaurants in all seasons, shrugging off any variants the British weather has to offer.
These seekers are indeed part of long and noble tradition: Lets us go back a few hundred years, when fluttering women in small silk shoes and huge three foot high wigs, tottered along those same flagstones. White pigment on their face and eyebrows fashioned from mouse skin adornments. Perhaps…walking their pet red squirrel on lead as they venture out to be seen in the fashionable quarters.
I might mention that back to those, some hundreds of years ago, the women who wandered along on the Pantiles with their expensive wigs, were often preyed upon by trained monkeys, looking to turn their owners a quick profit in the secondary wig market. It’s true!
And, let’s not forget…a lot…a lot…of gin…
Of the many Spa towns in the the UK, Tunbridge Wells is probably one of the strangest. As I wander further into the discovery of TW, I am more than ever fascinated by the way its peculiar history under-girds and is echoed by life in the present. The Georgian architecture which ornaments the town was created in a place where, for the first time, great artists, furniture-makers and architects, were home-grown. Tunbridge Wells developed at a time when the country was beginning to understand itself. Individual Britons, partly because of the growing exposure to the customs from abroad had the realisation to create, make, invent and sell their own goods, and thus a bustling forward thing town sprang from the wells.
I’ve always had the desire to paint things that reflect the best of this British tradition. To create pictures that combine a modern psychology with a sense of the accretion and the layers of time that leave their almost forgotten marks on a place, as it elevates me more to create contemporary paintings with a traditional feel. I aim to reveal the past of Tunbridge Wells and its layered history in a visual bonanza of original paintings, revealing and delving in to the left-field world of the towns historical and colourful past.
Art Exhibition – April 2023 (dates tbc), Spa Galleries, The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells, Kent