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6
St Edward’S
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Mural Memories
In an interview with artist
tim
Plant
(B, 1957-1961), the editor of
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discovers the history behind
a unique commission on the walls of St
Edward’s Dining Hall. Like the rest of the
dining room’s walls, it was once covered
with sports shields, yet in 1997 that
changed forever:
I was the sole artist responsible for
the work, but my wife Ana Maria helped
me paint it as she often does. She is a
long-established artist in her own right.
I was commissioned to do the mural by
the Warden, David Christie, and I believe
that Anne Brooks may have had a hand in
this. I did several projects over a period
of weeks, all of which were given to the
Warden to choose from, and the painting
work was completed in less than a month.
The painting is mainly a homage to
Kenneth Grahame and EH Shepherd, who
illustrated
The Wind in the Willows
, but it
contains other things as well. Going from
left to right – the young Lawrence Olivier
is shown as Ariel ‘putting a girdle about the
Earth in forty minutes.’
The big house on the back left is an
extrapolation of the drawing of Toad Hall
f e a t u r e s