A LOCAL artist has produced two eye-catching pieces of art as a protest against the controversial plan for an incinerator in Westbury.
Charles Minty, who lives in Great Hinton, was inspired after a conversation with his 89-year-old grandfather, a farmer near Dilton Marsh.
Charles, who recently took part in Sky Arts channel’s Landscape Artist of the Year programme, told White Horse News, “Mostly I paint scenes in watercolour from nature and the beautiful Wiltshire countryside, but this time I decided to paint an imagined view of Westbury if the incinerator is built.
“My grandfather, a good story teller with years of living memory and wisdom and close association with the land, laid out before me the impact the incinerator would have on the people of Westbury and surrounding area, where I live, and a picture was already forming in my mind. It was one that appalled me, and I felt that it was a powerful and emotive subject that I needed to share.
“That very evening I was also reminded about Picasso’s 1937 painting ‘Guernica’, which features a horse in distress, and so I painted the skeleton of the horse on the Westbury landscape, against a chaotic backdrop of this assault on the very air that the people, businesses and wildlife needed to survive.”
Charles shared the painting on social media where it attracted many likes and comments such as “brilliant” and “great picture”.
“Surprised by the response, I painted a second image in acrylic paint, this time as a banner for a protest in the centre of the town,” Charles said. “I decided to focus on the image of a horse, symbolic of Westbury, as an allegory for the harm inflicted on nature, reminiscent of the Norwegian painting, ‘The Scream’.
“My grandfather, who wished to commission me to paint a picture that he could display at the roadside highlighting the incinerator, approved of the banner and so we installed it on the road between Westbury and Chapmanslade (A3098).
“Like Picasso’s Guernica I feel we are also on the cusp of an even bigger human and environmental tragedy, the result of the pollution and destruction of the planet caused by human beings, and this may not be my last painting on this subject.”
