Happy Butchers Painting

Horrible Huddersfield; the alliterative cry glibly tumbles off the tongue of the Southern media types who rarely venture beyond Watford to see the truth behind the surveys and to question the online opinion of trolls and fake news extollers. Nay, lad tha’s got it wrong. Lift a rock and you will find insects and likewise, spend enough time outside an off licence or stay out late at a retail park and you find the chav with the nylon exo-skeleton of hoody and tracky bottom, tens of the them scuttling around vaping and engaged in the bizarre mating rituals of the skanky lass and the scrawny youth; slanted baseball caps, groin grabbing and out of place ghetto vocabulary. They live in anytown, the ubiquitous scourge of the age. Drive-by shooting of your camera phone, snuggly warm in your mass-produced symbol of a good credit rating, to record the apparent decline of the town; evidence of the end of days, the failing of the education system and calling into question your own libertarian values as, albeit briefly, you ponder the culling of a whole generation. No wonder they think Huddersfield is horrible you say to yourself as you speed off and head for the drive-thru coffee place. Huddersfield is ‘full of idiots’ they say. It may be true but the backdrop to all these idiots is some stunning countryside and exceptional architecture nestling in the hillside, sheltering from weather as changeable as the vagaries of the Press. It is beautiful, it is stunning and it deserves to be celebrated. We all know the town centre is a little tired but there is so much more to Huddersfield than pound shops and vomit outside the bars. Twelve paintings of idiots would be one kind of art, the type that people who wear vintage clothing would swoon over. We like and make art that everyone can fall in love with; the art of Huddersfield, the real place not the glossy tabloid easy-to-swallow version. There are no chavs, no hoodies, no heavily pregnant teens in our paintings. Our work is uplifting, hopeful and real. Art for the masses, not mass hysteria.