LLANDUDNO Selling the Sea

This was an exhibition of railway posters I was involved in with Jeremy Theophilus for the Llandudno Museum. Jeremy thought it a great idea to commission Tom to do a poster for the show. The one major institution who promised the majority of railway posters for the show suddenly sprung a bill on us for several thousands of pounds to line the backs of our choice of posters with canvas. With only weeks to go, Jeremy filled the Gallery with huge photographic blow-ups of postcards sent by holiday makers from Llandudno. For me, the poster shown above recalls experiences of huge ingenuity by Jeremy and our rage at the duplicity that lenders to exhibitions could demonstrate.

In his studio Tom showed me how this design developed, from a sketch on the back of an envelope, coloured in pencil.

"I started with a bucket and spade in a landscape. And then tried a direct reference to the town which I had known as a child on holiday.We would go to Llandudno every year. It fell into a sort of routine. The Sabbath was the Sabbath, We would go for walks around the Great Orme. Then we'd go to the Methodist Church, and there was a Band in the evening. There was The Happy Valley, the Minstrels. The Punch and Judy Man. There was a lake where boys like me sailed their yachts.

I was reading this book the other day where Picasso and Braque contributed essays to studies of creativity, mentioning the need to recognise extemporization. I always get ideas, but never in the way you'd think. I first visualised the profile of the Great Orme, but then tried and tried and nearly gave up. I was getting desperate. I played around with the proportions. Then something happened - I can't remember exactly what - and the whole thing came to life. In this book I read that if it always came out the way you intended there was probably no point in doing it. Typical Picasso this observation."