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The Angel of The North by Ian Scott Massie
Original Watercolour
12" x 10" Mounted size - 7" x 5" Image size
Available: unframed @ £215
To shop, please click here
12" x 10" Mounted size - 7" x 5" Image size
Available: unframed @ £215
To shop, please click here
THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
Whenever I drive to Newcastle I look up at the reassuring silhouette of the Angel, and it always makes me feel good. The power of art to bring light to dark places and hope to the despondent is a recurrent theme in human history. During a particularly testing time for the North East, Gateshead Council embraced this power and envisioned an inspiring statue to stand beside the A1 motorway, just up the hill from the East Coast Main Line.
Initially, the sculptor they approached, Anthony Gormley, looked down from his high horse and stated that he “did not make motorway art”. As the project was laid out for him, however, he warmed to the subject and began to see how it could be made to work by reviving a idea he’d had some years before to build an angel. The site was the Lower Tyne Colliery on a mound raised above the ruins of the colliery baths.
As Gormley says on his website, “I wanted to make an object that would be a focus of hope in a painful time of transition for the people of the North East”. An angel was just the symbol the North East needed. As the design took shape opposition grew, as it often does where public art is proposed. Fortunately the detractors failed to win the day, and the project went ahead.
The Angel was made in Hartlepool from weather-resistant steel. The body, 20 times the size of a human, weighed 100 tonnes - the wings weighed 50 tonnes each. On its five-hour, 28 mile, overnight journey to the site huge crowds appeared to watch it pass.
The Angel takes the form of a figure with outstretched wings, like those of an aircraft. In construction it is the very opposite of an angel, in the sense that it’s rooted to the ground by 600 tonnes of concrete securing it to bedrock. But its heavenly nature is revealed in the effect it has on those who see it. Looking up from the railway or the motorway, it has an uplifting and protective quality very much as an angel should.
Initially, the sculptor they approached, Anthony Gormley, looked down from his high horse and stated that he “did not make motorway art”. As the project was laid out for him, however, he warmed to the subject and began to see how it could be made to work by reviving a idea he’d had some years before to build an angel. The site was the Lower Tyne Colliery on a mound raised above the ruins of the colliery baths.
As Gormley says on his website, “I wanted to make an object that would be a focus of hope in a painful time of transition for the people of the North East”. An angel was just the symbol the North East needed. As the design took shape opposition grew, as it often does where public art is proposed. Fortunately the detractors failed to win the day, and the project went ahead.
The Angel was made in Hartlepool from weather-resistant steel. The body, 20 times the size of a human, weighed 100 tonnes - the wings weighed 50 tonnes each. On its five-hour, 28 mile, overnight journey to the site huge crowds appeared to watch it pass.
The Angel takes the form of a figure with outstretched wings, like those of an aircraft. In construction it is the very opposite of an angel, in the sense that it’s rooted to the ground by 600 tonnes of concrete securing it to bedrock. But its heavenly nature is revealed in the effect it has on those who see it. Looking up from the railway or the motorway, it has an uplifting and protective quality very much as an angel should.
How it would look on your wall
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