One of Cumbria’s best known artists, Conrad Atkinson, sadly died in October 2022.
Network member and writer Sue Allan, who knew him well, reflected on his life and his influence at the CACN Friday Zoom call on 14th October.
Sue writes:
“Conrad Atkinson: artist, activist, socialist, feminist, teacher, cultural champion, trouble-maker, Cumbrian. Sometimes described as ‘a cultural terrorist’, but he was also erudite, passionate, witty and good humoured, always supportive to young artists – and a very kind man.
Born and brought up in Cleator Moor, the renowned conceptual artist Conrad Atkinson, passed away peacefully last Saturday, aged 82, at the north Cumbrian home he shared with his wife Margaret Harrison – also a well-known artist. He had been ill for a while, and been progressively losing his sight for many years (a genetic condition: his grandfather went blind in later life).
I’ve known Conrad since the later 1990s, but we first met in 1988 on Eric Wallace’s late night Border TV chat show, ‘Wallace’. We shared the chat show sofa with Windscale (Sellafield) PR man and ex-journalist Jake Kelly, like Conrad a West Cumbrian. I interviewed Conrad in 2009 for a profile for Cumbria Life magazine, and asked him if he remembered the occasion. He did: ‘We didn’t let you get a word in edgeways, did we?” It was true.
Today Conrad is, sadly, probably less well-known in his native Cumbria than he is in the USA, where he spent so much of his professional life: Professor of Art and Chair of Dept. of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis from 1992, and from 2002, Professor Emeritus.
His work is in all the major UK collections of the UK and in many public and private collections in the USA, with many of his pieces in both solo and group shows sparking controversy over the years.”
View the Zoom recording of Sue’s presentation:
View the slides used in Sue’s presentation: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cmPWu4YO51-4Aq8mnuYyKe5gdMHakecX?usp=sharing
