Resurrection: Port Glasgow

But if a city hasn't been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively - Lanark, Alasdair Gray

Today's blip was taken at the Riverside Museum. It is a painting of Welders by Sir Stanley Spencer. It was from his series of works from World War II where he was commisioned to go to Port Glasgow to paint the war effort through shipbuilding. There was a recent, very good, BBC documentary about it.
I grew up in Port Glasgow and had absolutely no idea who he was until one day I went into the Tate in London and saw this huge triptych of paintings called The Ressurection: Port Glasgow. Stunned at first to see the Port mentioned in a high-brow museum I read on to discover that the cemetery in those paintings was the very same cemetery that I'd grown up playing in as a child.
It gave me a very odd feeling. Can highly regarded Art like this really come from the same place as I did? Did I somehow feel myself validated simply because an artist had created renowned paintings from my background?
Since that day I've read a lot about Spencer, and still can't believe that he is all but unknown in the Port. That such an internationally acclaimed piece of art about the town is of little interest or cause for celebration in the town.
Spencer felt that if the Resurrection were to happen the Port Glasgow Cemetery would be ideal for it. It is on a hill that overlooks the firth of Clyde.
This indeed, is where I used to play. On my bike, codes, kick kiss or torture?, chases, hide and seek, football and lots of other sacrilegious weans' play.
There was a huge angel gravestone that had one of its arms broken off. The story was that a woman was buried there who committed suicide after discovering her man's infidelity. He came up to the grave to apologise to her and the arm broke off killing him as well.
It was rumoured that the head moved to face different directions, so much so that we had an "angel watch" to record movements:

3.30 pm - still no change. Weans' play.

So discovering that our playground was actually a piece of art based on Dante's Inferno was a bit of a shock. Sometimes we feel that we come from the back of beyond where life is lived away from the important stuff. I think the thing I feel the most about a piece of art representing my childhood place is that Art is not a place where intellectuals gather and discuss and compare high matters on the left bank of the Seine. Neither is it London, or the canals of Venice.
Art is people responding imaginatively to their environment, wherever that may be. The cemetery at Port Glasgow seems such an unlikely place for Art, but it is there just as it is anywhere. Look around, everything that can happen in the Universe IS happening. Right there, where you are. All we need is a little imagination.

Onwards.