Painters make paintings because they’ve no choice
Some painters give where they live its own voice
There is a painter for whom we rejoice
Last of the pitman painters
Cornish by name he was Durham by birth
33 years digging coal the earth
He knew the price he paid - we know his worth
Last of the pitman painters
Chorus:
He painted scenes from a town he did know
Head-scarves and flat caps with whippets in tow
Men in a pub in a soft amber glow
Last of the pitman painters
Those were the days when King Coal wore a crown
No motor cars in his Spennymoor Town
Born in a coalfield in 1919
Answered his calling while crLast of the Pitman Painters
awling a seam
Down in a man’s world at only 14
Last of the pitman painters
Trapped in a cage every linnet will sing
Easing its rage with a song on the wing
He painted winters with warmth of a spring
Last of the pitman painters
Chorus:
Down in a cage every day he would drop
Earning his wage in the cruel butcher’s shop
Ferryhill pit where the coal was the crop
Last of the pitman painters
Deep in a forest of pit props & beams
Destiny’s hand fanned his smouldering dreams
He found the tinder for artistic themes
Last of the pitman painters
Chorus:
Spennymoor Town at its work and its play
That’s what he painted and sought to portray
Slices of life building bridges each day
Last of the pitman painters
Where is the coal now and where is the pit?
Where are his people of warmth and of wit?
Gone but now timeless on canvas they sit
Left by a pitman painter
Ending {freely}:
His paintings were poems to the people he knew
Shadows of times that have now passed from view
He was first among many and last of the few
He was the last of the pitman painters
