Ragged optimism in Margate
Plus the photorealist painter, new Kent music from Hunter, we review Frederic Bistro, upcoming Kent events, and more
Optimism can be in short supply these days, but one Margate man has made a point of delivering it to readers every single week. We’ve been finding out more. Further down, we meet a photorealist painter whose elaborate technique is gaining plaudits. We also hear new music from Kent’s Hunter, review Frederic Bistro in Maidstone, look at the best upcoming Kent events, and lots more.
Ragged Optimism in Margate
Dan Thompson was behind the Empty Shops Network and wrote Pop Up Business for Dummies as part of efforts to regenerate our town centres. Following a turbulent time in which he was evicted from his home, we caught up with him back in Margate and discovered that, despite it all, he was feeling optimistic.
Dan is walking around Margate as we talk. He is conducting a couple of history walks in May, and one of them has a slightly different route, and he wants to make sure he gets it right. Dan is an artist and writer with a significant interest in the local history of Margate and the surrounding area. “If we understand places better, we can imagine a better future for them and have a better life,” he tells me. With this focus, a lot of Dan’s work is around working with communities, giving them the skills and the knowledge to make their place better.
Dan has led Margate history walks for years. “Margate is a fascinating place. It has all these odd things going on, strange little stories and quirks that nobody knows about.” Dan has found that taking people on a walk is a good way to introduce them to the town, show them a different side, and tell them different stories. One of the upcoming walks involves the real locations used in the BBC Drama series ‘The Dream Lands,’ set in Margate and based on the Book series by Rosa Rankin-Gee. “I'm going to pass the filming while it's going on as well.”
His other walk centres on Margate’s music past, tying into an annual music festival that happens in the town every year. “I do one for them every year that takes in David Bowie's first band being here, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles. All sorts of stuff that happened here.” Each walk has a slightly different theme and flavour but helps you to see a different side of Margate. If you are interested in joining Dan on a walk, your best chance is to check out his website, though, “I can't guarantee I'll always put stuff on there because, like all of us, I'm a bit rubbish at managing the website all the time.”
Dan also writes a Substack newsletter called ‘The Ragged Optimist,’ and he will often post about events there as well. His weekly Substack focuses on good news every week. “Ten pieces of good news every week, guaranteed.” He looks UK-wide at “rewilding, architecture, co-housing, and all sorts of things.” Dan believes there is a significant focus on the negative and how bad things are, but “there's lots of things going right as well,” and “we've got a chance to turn this shit around and make the world better.” Dan also writes a monthly newsletter about seaside towns and their regeneration.
He decided to launch his newsletter after having a really horrible year. “I was evicted from my house. My partner and children were evicted from their house. Everything felt like it was going wrong.” Dan felt he needed to do something to bring back the hope and optimism he was missing. “It was a very deliberate act” to find ten stories of joy, hope and optimism. He finds that putting it together each week “rewires my brain,” and he is now looking at things differently, finding it easier to see those hopeful stories. A year in, it has completely changed “the way that I see the world and the way that I feel about the world.”
I ask Dan to give me an example of unexpected good news. Without missing a beat, he announces that “every week there's something about beavers.” Dan is really excited about beavers returning to the UK, and every week there are new stories about new beavers being released or something else beaver-related. Dan is also interested in co-housing. “There's lots of new models of how we're going to house people.” Dan also covers green architecture, heritage, and “all sorts of interesting events around nature and the climate crisis that are worth looking at.”
All of this positivity is available for free. “Ragged Optimist is completely free because I just want to spread the good news.” The guided walks are also free, “but people can make a donation or tip if they want to.” Dan’s monthly newsletter about seaside towns and regeneration is for paying subscribers, “because why shouldn't I be paid for the work I do sometimes?” Which seems absolutely fair enough.
I ask for an example of something he has written about in the monthly seaside newsletter, which covers culture-led regeneration and how arts and culture are helping seaside towns. Dan has covered the history of Turner Contemporary in Margate and a cinema in Worthing that he was involved in saving. It looks at what lessons we can learn and the broader themes that come from that. “Looking close lets you look at what all seaside towns have in common.”
A principal focus for Dan has always been Margate, known for seaside kitsch, buckets and spades, and the Dreamland amusement park, but Dan is quick to highlight how much more there is to it. “Actually, the Isle of Thanet, where Margate is, is one of the richest prehistoric landscapes in the UK. We have more ancient burial mounds and prehistoric sites in Thanet than at Stonehenge.” Dan loves the idea of dark, hidden history buried beneath the kitsch, of ancient ritual sites “that nobody's quite sure what they're there for.”
The photorealist painter
Chris James grew up in Kent and graduated with a degree in fine art from the former Kent Institute of Art and Design in Maidstone. After graduation, he started working in china restoration. “I was restoring vases, figurines, pots and things like that,” he tells me. A number of James’ clients were Chinese pottery dealers, and he had to research how they painted the pottery to ensure it was mended correctly. Through this, Chris discovered the Chinese bird and flower painting tradition, “which we didn't have in the West.”
As Chris’ interest developed, he started doing small paintings himself. “I've always been a bit of a twitcher as well, out the back of Teynham, there's Swale marshes, and I would go out bird watching.” It was this combination of fine art degree, Chinese restoration and bird watching that led to his paintings of little birds, and then some got exhibited. Then some of them started to sell. “I thought, oh, this is interesting.”
Whilst Chris learnt painting at school and on his degree, it was the techniques he used in restoration that led to this new career. “It was very fine work, and it was very detailed.” Chris’ technique includes using washes as well. “I use very detailed fine brushes and then do a semi-transparent wash,” before going back and adding detail and more washes of colour. “It's a technique of layer upon layer upon layer. Unfortunately, it takes bloody ages.”
Chris acknowledges that this technique, which adds more and more detai,l “was an obsession really,” as he focused on capturing every feather and getting the colours right. “It's all a philosophy. How I do it is wanting to spend as much time and effort and focus,” and then hoping that the viewer will reciprocate the time he dedicated to it. “I think it's kind of rude not to in a way, if you rushed a painting and think a viewer would spend any time with it.” Chris feels he has to put this effort in to earn more than a fleeting glance from a viewer.
He started developing this technique slowly, noting, “I painted a goldfinch early on and that captured things.” When he found people liked the work, he started dedicating more time to it. “It's a bit of a rod for my own back really, because now that's become my thing.” After he managed to sell a few, exhibit more and receive private commissions, Chris stopped his original restoration work and focused on painting full-time. “I just preferred it. I'd been doing the restoration a while, and to be quite honest with you, there's quite smelly chemicals involved, and it was starting to do my head in a bit.”
Chris’ first exhibition was at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne when his partner, Ruth, submitted his work to an open exhibition. “She entered me and didn't tell me about it,” he recalls. Chris is now a Rye Society of Artists member, alongside other professional artists and Royal Academy members. They have a spring exhibition at the Rye Art Gallery and are planning a summer exhibition in August. A highlight for Chris exhibiting was having paintings selected for the Royal Academy. “Each year, they have the summer exhibition and thousands of people enter. Over the years, I've had five paintings in there.”
Chris’ painting has developed into botanical art, and he is exhibiting with the Society of Botanical Artists in the Mall Galleries in London. He uses the same process of photorealism and carefully painting, washing, and layering. He has also done commissions of people’s dogs and has painted other animals, including “a squirrel and a hedgehog.”
Chris' most difficult painting was a big area of weeds. “I think it was a symptom of lockdown. It was that period when we could only do a little bit of exercise, and it had dandelions and forget me nots and a few things like that. I thought, ‘I'm going do that.’ And once I got into it, I realised, ‘Oh bugger, it is quite difficult.’ But I did it. That got into the Royal Academy. It came out quite well, but it was quite complex”.
New Kent music: Raw Beginnings by Hunter
by Stephen Morris
Chris Hunter’s Raw Beginnings is far from raw in sound, tracing its lineage through the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Dave Gilmour and Dire Straits. There’s a strong taste of country rock here that gives the album a timeless quality; it could have been recorded at any point from the late 80s onwards.
Stand out track ‘Vero Beach,’ so named after a city in Florida, has an anthemic quality to it, with lyrics documenting the battle between what is and what could be. It’s possibly the only song you’ll ever hear featuring a reference to doing your tax returns.
Elsewhere, ‘Good to Feel the Feeling Fade’ slows the pace and brings the volume down into a soulful ballad spelling out the relief of coming to terms with a broken heart – although the comparison to “a drowning man slipping under the waves” suggests a level of ambiguity that implies this fading feeling may not so good after all. See Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’ for further details.
Raw Beginnings touches on many of the standard tropes of rock: regret for the past, dissatisfaction with the present, a yearning for a better future. It’s a solid collection of songs, with Hunter impressively responsible for every note, every beat, and every vocal heard on the album.
Raw Beginnings by Hunter is now available from Prestige Elite Records and will be available shortly on Spotify and other streaming services.
Out to Lunch: Frederic Bistro in Maidstone
Tucked away down a side street in the centre of Maidstone is Frederic Bistro. There are a number of doors, and not all of them open. It is a lottery that this writer did not win. This stylish French bistro includes a deli counter and a range of wines to buy, but as the title suggests, I was there for lunch. The bistro was encouragingly busy, and while I was seated quickly, it became apparent that my chair was in a walkway.
I ordered a steak baguette, which the menu informed me was cooked pink and came with chimichurri sauce and fries. The baguette was on the more expensive side, and for an extra charge, I ordered the optional extra of salad and more fries. As the baguette itself already came with fries, rather than serve double fries or charge me less for the salad, they served an extra-large salad, which was… a choice. A choice I wasn’t consulted on, which was… fine.
The steak baguette was absolutely delicious. The chimichurri was great, but I have to ask if a French bistro could consider a French sauce that goes with steak. The French fries were great, and I could have eaten more. The salad was made to a really high standard, complemented with a pesto sauce, but there was a lot, and I could have eaten less.
Overall, quantity mixups aside, Frederic Bistro is a stylish venue that serves good quality food, and is definitely worth checking out.
Upcoming Kent events
🎸 Fri 16 May - Jeffrey Lewis & the Voltage // Legendary indie-folker Lewis brings his unique blend of music and art to Kent, supported by David Cronenberg’s Wife and the Awkward Silences. Where Else?, Margate. Tickets £25.
🍷 16 - 17 May - Canterbury Wine Festival // Meet wine producers from across Kent, with 70 different wines available to taste. Westgate Hall, Canterbury. Tickets from £45.
🚜 17 - 18 May - Faversham Festival of Transport // Classic cars, bikes, buses, and steam engines on display through the centre of Faversham. Free.
🎤 Thu 22 May - An Evening With David Baddiel // Comedian and author holds an in conversation event, followed by an audience Q&A. St. Mary’s Art Centre, Sandwich. Tickets £22.
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