From industrial Swindon to London's swinging 60s

JANET HUGHES chats to 83-year-old artist Ken White - the talented, working-class West Country boy who, against the odds, carved out an exciting and fascinating life and career in the art world... and still paints today

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It was the Swinging Sixties and while the streets of London might not have been paved with gold, they were teeming with bright young things in mini skirts and flares looking to make a shiny new world for themselves. Seen as the epicentre of an exciting cultural revolution, the capital was bursting with optimism for the future and swarming with creatives from the world of music, fashion and the arts.

Among the young hopefuls arriving in London in the late 1960s were three young men who met at a West Country college and shared a quiet but steely determination to overcome their difficult start in life and make their way in the arts.

Irish born Ray O’Sullivan was the youngest of the trio of friends from that graphic design course at the old Swindon College. His large family had struggled financially following the death of his father when Ray was just 11 years old.

Richard Davies, who developed a love of music as a snare drummer in the British Railways Staff Association marching band, had been forced to disband his fledgling rock group Rick's Blues and leave college to become a welder when his father fell ill.

Ken White was older than the others because he had reluctantly followed his father, brother, uncle and grandad into Swindon’s Great Western Railway after leaving school at the age of 15.

"You just followed your family into the railways, you had no choice,’ he explained about working class life in the rapidly expanding manufacturing town built on the legacy of Alexander Kingdom Brunel. “I started out as a rivet hotter. It was awful. I was only 15 surrounded by all these grown men and the metal used to drip down on the floor and come splashing up and burn my legs.

“I managed to get a job sign writing in the carriage works and started going to evening classes for art. The teacher said ‘you are good, you ought to go full-time!