Monday, 19 January 2009

Take Hart

Couldn’t let today pass without remembering Tony Hart. I was sad to hear he had died at the weekend and that in the last few months of his life he had to give up art. I grew up with Vision On and loved the art adventures the programme would take its viewers on and the wonderful range of materials he worked with from crayons and paint to motorbikes in the sand. Reading the obituaries I am struck by how calm and gentle he seemed and his commitment to taking art to children. A while ago, I picked up one of his books published in the eighties, ‘Small Hands, Big Ideas’.
The book has lovely examples of the different types of art children can produce at different ages, and is packed with ideas for children to try from mono prints to bubble paint, each illustrated with trips to different schools and examples of the children’s work.
And of course, examples of his own work.

2 comments:

David Nichols said...

Sorry to hear of TH's death. Vision On a feature of my childhood, there were books related to the show if I remember rightly. Was TH a cartoonist in something like TV Comic as well? I remember his signature on something... checking him out on Wikipedia didn't help in this regard but there are some other interesting facts about him.

Fabric Nation said...

mmm, vision on books sound good. Not sure if he worked with TV comic, but he used to have a page in 'Your family' (never heard of it) to demonstrate cartoon drawing skills. Reading about him, he seemed to work so hard in lots of different settings to promote drawing and painting. A few people have posted pictures of drawings he did for them when he met them, he comes over as a very generous man.