By Dan Thompson
A new exhibition in the cafe at Ellington Park in Ramsgate celebrates a popular local artist’s connection with the place.
Michael Blaker had lived in Ramsgate for more than 30 years, before passing away in 2018.
An artist equally at home painting in oils, printing etchings, writing fiction or playing trad jazz, he loved the park and its bandstand. Michael was a keen supporter of The Friends of Ellington Park who have overseen the Victorian park’s restoration, and his wife, Catriona, has written the official history of the park for the group.
Michael trained at Brighton School of Art after the Second World War, and lived through an age when ‘art school’ stood for a way of life as much as a training for a future career. He ran his own gallery, published pamphlets, wrote for The Artist and Leisure Painter, was signwriter for Brighton’s West Pier and exhibited widely, including at the Royal Academy.
The small exhibition in the Ellington Park cafe includes two oil paintings, capturing the park in different seasons and some of Michael’s many prints of the bandstand, performers, and audiences. The cafe is open daily.
Catriona’s history of the park is for sale in the park’s bookshop, open Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.
For more information visit www.ellingtonpark.org.uk
