Sketches for Oxfam 2021

 Forgive me if you’ve seen previous posts on this subject, and you already know all of this, but in case you don’t . . . Way back in the mists of time, back in 2019 before lockdown, my daughter, Phillippa, who manages the Oxfam shop in Port Talbot came to me and said this. She’s had a line drawing of part of Port Talbot – it escapes me which now – in the shop, and sold it for £30. Her immortal words were , “Yours are no worse than that. Can yo do some for me?” Well it’s hard to turn down a request when you’re asked so nicely.

That initial tranche of sketches did very well for the shop, raising several hundred pounds. So when the shop reopened last summer after the first lockdown, I did some more, and without going into the actual figures, they raised a lot for the shop.

So, here we are again, shops opening all over the place, and with only a couple of sketches from the 2 dozen or so I made last year still in stock, Phillippa asked me to do some more. So here they are.

1) The Big Apple Aberavon Beach.

If you want to see a kiosk like this you have to go to Mumbles, the other side of Swansea, where there’s one in the car park right above Mumbles. This one used to stand on the prom in Aberavon Beach. I’ll be honest, I never saw it in person. I don’t know when it was removed, but it had certainly gone by the time I moved to Port Talbot in 1986. I’ll say more about this when I get onto the funfair, but it is difficult to understand what the local council were up to with Aberavon Beach on the 70s and 80s.

2) Ore Cranes

I’ve sketched Port Talbot’s iconic dock cranes several times before. I will come clean and admit this was purely a commercial decision. Don’t get me wrong, I love drawing the cranes, but also, they sell. We sold drawings of these cranes in both previous Oxfam selections, and during my first raft fair I sold one to our local MP. The sketch for Oxfam in 2020 is one of my best selling prints as well.

3, 4 and 5) Miami Beach Funfair Aberavon

The funfair was opened in 1963, I think, and closed in 1983, so for me it was a near miss – I was only 3 years late. I don’t know why it was closed down – although I can hazard a guess. Businesses rarely close because they’re doing well and making money. It’s a shame though – nearby Porthcawl’s Coney Beach has managed to keep going. The funfair is still very fondly remembered by a generation of Port Talbot’s citizens though. The second of these pictures was sold for the shop even before the shop reopened! One of my previous Oxfam sketches of the fair is amongst my best-selling prints.

4) Jersey Beach Hotel

We’re still down the beach again with this next one, and yes, I have drawn the Jersey Beach hotel before. I’ve made well over a hundred drawings of Port Talbot so repeating myself is something that’s going to happen, I’m afraid. The Jersey Beach Hotel was a fixture on the Aberavon Seafront for a long time, and I remember it quite well. I played my first ever big quiz final in there in 1988, when my team completed the Port Talbot League and cup double, and I won the individual (because the two better players in my team didn’t want to play in it.) The hotel closed for good in 1999, and was destroyed by fire a few years later.

5) Station Road with Level Crossing

In the last couple of years I drew the same scene of the level crossing twice, so I fancied a different view of it. I’m still in the 50s/60s with this sketch, but it’s done from the street level, and from the other side of the gate in this one. Station Road is probably Port Talbot’s main shopping street, even if many of the main stores have now moved into the Aberavon shopping centre. As for the level crossing, picturesque as it is, older inhabitants of the town remember it as causing real traffic problems. Looking at old photographs, it’s hard to disagree that the 1970s redevelopment of the town centre to make room for the shopping centre and the civic centre ripped the guts and the heart out of the centre of the town. Still, removing this picturesque traffic impediment was at least one positive development.

6) The Plaza Cinema

This building is currently in the process of a major redevelopment. The 1930s original façade is still standing, but the original building behind has been demolished, and a new purpose built arts centre is going up behind. I’m gong to reserve judgement until the building is actually completed and opened. I think it’s going to be important to remember that the Plaza, like most cinemas of the same period, may have had a fantastic façade (it did), but behind the façade it was largely a huge concrete barn.

I’ve sketched the Plaza for each of the previous Oxfam selections. Last year I sketched it from the station. This year I used the same reference photo that I used for the 2019 sketch – which incidentally is by some distance my best-selling print – and I changed the film. I’m a massive fan of the Indiana Jones movies (even the Crystal Skull) so I changed it to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade since I first saw that one here in the Plaza.

7) Shift Change at the Steelworks

This one shows steelworkers at shift change, walking along Ffrwdwyllt Street. This street has greatly changed since the reference photograph on which I based the drawing was taken. The chapel and some of the nearer houses are still there, but this entrance to the steelworks has been closed off, and you have to go to Margam. My steelworks pictures have always sold well in Oxfam, while steelworks are another of my bestselling prints, along with the Plaza, the Funfair and the Ore cranes.