Sir Peter Blake is probably best known for his creation of the album cover artwork for The Beatles heavily psychedelically influenced late 60s release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I remember spending my earliest childhood years staring at Blake’s creation as well as listening to the glorious sounds of what I would consider the peak of The Beatles’ musical achievements. I was born on New Year’s Eve 1968, my parents were very young and back in those days most families would force couples to marry when the girl was expecting. Hence I was born, it would be another couple of years before dad would get enough money together to support us, and by two I was pulled away from the stilted environment of a crowded family house filled with uncles in their late teens and early twenties and an overbearing grandfather who’d insist on a orderly home filled with the occasional piece of Muzak on the radio and into a rented council flat with two kids who really didn’t know what they were doing.

It was obvious times would be tough in the years ahead and both my parents were extremely busy trying to bring in the money, soon my sister was born and eventually things began to settle down. In this topsy-turvy environment I took solace in the sights and sounds of The Beatles, and especially their album cover artwork which as a toddler I began to try and emulate in my own crayon scribbles. Funnily enough many many years later in between school and college I spent a few weeks one summer working in a lumber yard, I was teamed up with a rather dishevelled and drunken man who I tried my best to look out for in such a dangerous place. Unfortunately I cannot recall his name all these years later but I do remember him recounting his days in the late 60s. He was an animator back then and used to draw backgrounds for many feature length cartoons at the time, one of them being Yellow Submarine.

It seemed rather a coincidence that the movie was released the year I was born and then here was a guy who had actually helped make such an influential film, sitting in a lumber yard in Gravesend, Kent, drunk on cheap vodka, reminiscing about his days of psychedelia. He recalled a few stories about Peter Blake, I’m not sure if they had attended school and/or college together but I do know the guys had fell out some years before, perhaps due to the drinking, who knows. It’s funny how creative my home patch was back then, I was originally raised in Bromley, Kent (birthplace of David Bowie), then I lived in Dartford (birthplace of Peter Blake) and attended Dartford Grammar School (as did Mick Jagger). Sometimes I think I should have been born a few decades before my time, it seems to have worked out for everyone else ;/

Anyway that’s about as close as I’ve ever got to the godfather of British Pop Art, however you might want a slice of Blake’s work yourself if you have a little spare cash lying about (a rare thing these days). Recently Peter has ventured into photography, following in the footsteps of such names as Andy Warhol and Helmut Newton, who’s polaroids have fetched upwards of £30,000 at recent auctions. Sir Peter Blake’s polaroids are soon to be sold at the launch price of £950 each which is a bargain (relatively speaking) for most art collectors out there. All the photos were taken at Blake’s studio and home using a SLR680 camera and are being exhibited at Opus Art’s Newcastle-based gallery from the 19th June to 1st August 2009. As it happens I’ve found a reference to a series of 2003 polaroids Blake created and signed in 2003 at the Tate Online which feature his found objects alphabet.

If you want to snap up an original work by Sir Peter Blake then register your interest here before the official launch (to have any chance of owning one). For interviews, more information or an invitation to the exhibition’s preview night on Thursday 18th June, contact Nicky @ White Hot Communications:-  0191 2808020 0191 2849801 nicky@whitehotcomms.co.uk at the Opus Gallery West Avenue, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE3 4ES. Admission free.

This post is tagged 1960s, beatles, British Art, British artist, Peter Blake, photography, Pop Art