The Newton Arkwright Commission 2010-11

English poet DH Lawrence attended Nottingham Trent University (then University College) in 1906-08. He received his teaching certificate following his study in the Arkwright building. In his novel The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence drew on his own memories of Arkwright for, character, Ursula Brangwen's first impressions of College.

For the Newton/Arkwright commission I've used Lawrence’s famous piece of fiction to create the following four paintings.

Extracts from Chapter 15; THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY
Term began. She went into town each day by train. The cloistered quiet of the college began to close around her.
She was not at first disappointed. The big college built of stone, standing in the quiet street, with a rim of grass and lime trees all so peaceful: she felt it remote, a magic land. Its architecture was foolish, she knew from her father. Still, it was different from that of all other buildings. Its rather pretty, plaything, Gothic form was almost a style, in the dirty industrial town...

...Still, it was lovely to pass along the corridor with one’s books in one’s hands, to push the swinging, glass-panelled door, and enter the big room where the first lecture would be given. The windows were large and lofty, the myriad brown students’ desks stood waiting, the great blackboard was smooth behind the rostrum.
Ursula sat beside her window, rather far back. Looking down, she saw the lime trees turning yellow, the tradesman’s boy passing silent down the still, autumn-sunny street...
...She listened, she scribbled her notes with joy, almost with ecstasy, never for a moment criticising what she heard. The lecturer was a mouth-piece, a priest. As he stood, black-gowned, on the rostrum, some strands of the whispering confusion of knowledge that filled the whole place seemed to be singled out and woven together by him, till they became a lecture...
...She soon made a college friend, a girl who had lived in Florence, a girl who wore a wonderful purple or figured scarf draped over a plain, dark dress. She was Dorothy Russell, daughter of a south-country advocate. Dorothy lived with a maiden aunt in Nottingham, and spent her spare moments slaving for the Women’s Social and Political Union. She was quiet and intense, with an ivory face and dark hair looped plain over her ears...
All work made 2010-11.