Tommy the 95 -year- old artist and story-teller

Today Tommy McGoran, the 95-year-old artist, entertained gallery visitors this afternoon with stories  and songs about his early childhood in Glasgow.
 
It was a piece of social history performed before our eyes. He has a photographic memory and this has enabled him to recreate scenes of working class Glasgow from the 1930s and 1940s on canvas.
 
And it is this insight into a bygone world that fascinates visitors.
 
Here are some snippets from our conversation:
 
“We were poor but we dint know we were poor. We only ever saw rich people on the screen in cinemas.”
 
“We lived in a single end. Twelve of us plus a cat and dog” (A single end refers to a one room apartment in a tenement block with no bathroom and a shared toilet known as a “cludgie”).
 
“In winter if the roads were icy we would take our tin bath down to the coal merchant on a trolley to collect coal because the men with their horse drawn carts would not come out in case their horses fell on the ice.”
 
 
“ There was a great sense of community. We all looked out for each other. Today folk don’t know their neighbours.”
 
He says he always drew since a child, encouraged by his artistic mother and when he retired at 60 his wife bought him a set of oil paints. 
 
( He worked as a projectionist, spent time in the RAF then latterly on the railways ).
 
What’s the secret of his long and healthy life?
“ I am an optimist, I’ve had Covid twice and recovered. No, I don’t smoke or drink. I eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and everything else in moderation. And I drink lots of water. Oh yes I do my exercises every day, you’ve got to at my age otherwise you seize up.”
 
He lives on his own, since the death of his wife four years ago, and  paints everyday. He has a television but rarely watches it “ I don’t have the time.”
 
When he had his exhibition a few weeks ago in Glasgow the queues to meet him extended around the block.
 
See extra photo of Tommy with the guy who bought one of his prints and myself holding it.

For further info. see my  earlier Blip about Tommy.