Rivington,<\/a> kickstarting a love of this lovely area which has not only stayed with him over decades but inspired some of his best-known work.<\/p>\nAfter primary school in Horwich, he went to Rivington and Blackrod High School. While he recalls that he was \u201cnot academic\u201d, the school\u2019s splendid setting meant that he could often \u201clook out of the window at the birds and the countryside rather than getting on with my work!\u201d<\/p>\n
He enjoyed art there and gained this at GCE along with geography but he left school with no clear idea of a career and worked in a variety of jobs before deciding to do something positive.<\/p>\n
He went to Horwich College to improve his GCE\u2019s then on to Chorley College to take teacher training and Gerry gained a BEd (Hons) from Lancaster University.<\/p>\n
After an initial post teaching all subjects at Hindley County Secondary School, fate stepped in and a job as an art teacher back at Rivington and Blackrod High School beckoned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fitted in easily here and always enjoyed it\u201d, remembers Gerry.<\/p>\n
When the Head of Art position became vacant, Gerry took over that post and had 16 happy years teaching there.<\/p>\n
By the time he had started teaching, though, Gerry was already painting regularly in his spare-time, often inspired by his beloved Rivington.<\/p>\n
As his work became more popular, he was faced with the inevitable choice of teaching or painting, and the latter won the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was quite scared when I left,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause I had no real income coming in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThough I\u2019d loved teaching \u2013 and still see pupils I taught today \u2013 I had to paint and I had to give it more time.\u201d<\/p>\n
From painting in his Adlington home he moved first to a small studio on a Horwich trading estate and then, more than 20 years ago, into Victoria House on Victoria Road, Horwich.<\/p>\n
Here, he now works four days a week, spending weekends with wife Pam walking or bird-watching.<\/p>\n
Although his landscapes helped establish his reputation as a talented artist, Gerry is equally at home with abstracts and with painting people \u2013 usually groups of people doing something.<\/p>\n
He particularly loves the view from planes of where the sea meets the land and on flights, like the rest of his life, he keeps a sketchbook handy to create quick sketches of views that impress him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always loved that coming together of land and sea but I\u2019ve taken it further now and look closely at rockpools, for example, and create abstracts from what you can see there,\u201d he says, showing me fascinating paintings of both.<\/p>\n
His work has travelled to many other countries across the world partly because of former pupils and their parents who commission work and spread the word.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, these are views from their homes that they want to keep. Often, it is a favourite view of somewhere around Rivington that forms the centrepiece of these wonderful visual memories.<\/p>\n
Not all commission are just paintings, either. \u201cI was asked by a folk group called Tapestry based in Cornwall, which includes a former pupil who left the area more than 35 years ago, to create a view of either the Pike or the Pigeon Tower,\u201d states Gerry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was for the cover of their latest CD and they particularly liked the Pigeon Tower so it\u2019s now on their new one.\u201d<\/p>\n
His talents, though, have also been acknowledged by the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts which has a very distinguished history including L S Lowry as a member. Gerry is a former President of the Academy and still a member.<\/p>\n
He paints mainly in acrylics and is a member of the National Acrylic Painters Association but has more recently also started working in pastels.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s plain he loves his work \u201cbut I am always hopeful that other people will enjoy them, too.\u201d And, plainly, they do.<\/p>\n
\u00b7Gerry Halpin\u2019s paintings can be seen at Framing Madness in Nortex Mill, Bolton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The modest former teacher, now an MBE, who taught generations of local children to love art is still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-503112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}