Glyn Hughes 1931 - 2014

71 Courtaulds factory where he worked. 1 Although primarily a painter, Glyn was first attracted to batik as a technique he could use for abstract and figurative work by exchanging a pastel for a beautiful batik from Sri Lanka, given to him in the mid- 1960s by Imogen Kannangara. He was to remember sleeping in two of his best batiks in the fields during the 1974 war in Cyprus, while taking Sotos Florides, his Cypriot godchild, from Famagusta to Limassol. He called it “art to run away with” and spent several years using this medium when, in the turmoil of events after 1974, he had no job and could not afford paints. Teaching art and drama at Cobourg School in the Old Kent Road in London’s East End in the early 1950s, Glyn’s memories are of fog, charladies [cleaning ladies] crying on the tram one evening because Ruth Ellis 2 had been hanged, weaving classes at Camberwell, 3 the ICA and meeting other artists, including Gillian Ayres, Harry Mundy, Bernard Farmer and MalcolmMorley. His free time was spent visiting exhibitions at major galleries (Barbara Hepworth, Piet Mondrian, the big American show with Jackson Pollock) and the smaller commercial ones, where he would catch up with the continental modernists. He went to the London theatres (Peter Hall directed Waiting for Godot at this time, and John Gielgud played the lead in King Lear with designs by Isamu Naguchi), films at the South Bank, and was accepted (not for his admission essay, but by giving in some small paintings) on an extramural weekend on Pop Art with Lawrence Alloway as the main speaker, an art critic and curator to whom the origins of the term “Pop Art” is attributed. 1 Courtaulds was a United Kingdom-based manufacturer of fabric, clothing, artificial fibres, and chemicals. It was established in 1794 and gradually became the world’s leading man-made fibre production company before being broken up in different companies, in 1990. 2 Ruth Ellis (1926–1955) was the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom, after being convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely. She was hanged at Holloway prison, London, on 13 July 1955. 3 Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London, which was renamed to Camberwell College of Arts in 1989, is currently a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost art and design institutions.