CELTIC historian Victor Walkley of Netherthong has completed hundreds of paintings with related inscriptions on his favourite topic.
“We were not taught about the Celts at school. They were thought to be barbarians,” he says. But revisionists have found they were a highly sophisticated people, with a good system of laws.
“They were highly appreciative of decorative design, and there was a linkage of different forms of art. They brought together artistic design, creative art and metalwork.
“I have been studying the Celts most of my life. I have travelled extensively through Europe tracing them. These paintings are a merging together of Celtic, early Arabic and Coptic.
The characters in Victor’s paintings include Nimah, a visitor from another world, who meets the son of a Celtic king and takes him there. “The Celts had knowledge of a parallel universe,” Victor claims.
He has completed pictures in Lebanon, Kuwait and Jordan, and illustrated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
He says the design for his Celtic paintings, which also contain large amounts of text in calligraphy, look complicated, but he has got very used to them and does not find the oil painting difficult. He prefers it to acrylics.
A food scientist by training – he was once technical director of 14 companies – Victor had his schooling in Cheltenham in the 1920s and it was observing stone circles and grave mounds during this period that sparked his interest in past civilisations.
A widower, with a son Peter, Victor has written two books on the Celts, titled Celtic Daily Life and Life and The Warrior, and has a third in preparation. His paintings have been seen in the Holmfirth Artweek exhibitions.
MORE than 60 works are on show, displaying a wide range of talent, in Stockport Art Guild’s Spring Exhibition, which runs at Saddleworth Museum Gallery, Uppermill until April 20. Opening hours are Monday to Saturday, 10am-4.30pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm.
