Growing Up In Dudley - Ken Wood

I was born in Ironbridge in Shropshire and my parents brought me to Dudley when I was a child really, I was only about 8 or 9. 

I started sketching at a very early age but as I got into my teens I realised just what an interesting even dramatic place the Black Country was in so far as the the factories, the smells from the factories the furnaces and the glows in the sky from the furnaces of steel works such as Wednesbury Tube there was all sort of steel - the one in particular was Round Oak Steel Works, because even today, people used to talk about the skies when they opened up the furnaces at Round Oak in Brierley Hill. And when I was in my teens it just registered with me… the beauty of these places. 

People say ‘how can the Black Country be beautiful?’ well they see it through different eyes you see. I look at it differently to these people. I see beauty in the canals, and the reflection in the canals. I probably see things that other people don’t notice so I had a desire to draw them down originally with pencils then I went on to oil paintings. Now all my work now is oil paintings because I can get an effect in oils that I can’t get in any other medium.

I’m always looking for something new - as long as it is something to the Black Country. Obviously the Castle the Black Country Museum and things like that. Most of my work is probably… you could register it around the 1950s. Some of my work i’ve got the old fashioned trolly buses. I’m not impressed by modern buildings, modern factories, modern trading estates. I’m not impressed at all… but I am impressed with the old engineering companies - belching out steam and power and things like that. That’s what interests me and that’s what grabs me. That’s probably why my work always seems to be from the 1950s.

A lot of it are actually places that I remember as a lad. Obviously I change things around a bit and sometimes i’ll go into the library and i’ll find old black and white pictures and use those as an idea or as a basis of what I want to do. When I first started school I wanted to work at a printers.

I had to go to Wolverhampton Art School as part of the printing course - I actually wanted to be a printer when I was a kid. And it took in commercial art, it was all part of the printing course.  I did that for a couple of years and then I drifted in to engineering. And I was in engineering up until my 60th birthday and I retired at 60 so I could concentrate on my paintings. So that’s what I did - I always wanted to paint but it never paid the bills.

I’m doing something now that I have always wanted to do. I just worry sometimes. When anything finally happens to me, are people still going to appreciate my work? What I would like is for people look at my work, even when I’ve gone to the studio in the sky. I would hate to think a picture of mine would end up say tucked behind somebody’s wardrobe or settee or whatever - I want to see them on the walls.

Thank you to Ken Wood for his interview and sharing his story with us.