Courage in combat and on canvas
January 9th, 2012 | No Comments
Hank Adlam unveils what is likely to be his last exhibition of paintings as his sight deteriorates; above and centre, some of Hank’s land and seascapes, which include memories of his wartime experiences
By anyone’s standards, Henry Adlam – known to all as Hank – has had an extraordinary life. From his dashing wartime scrapes as a Royal Navy fighter pilot, through his more sedate years as bursar of Clifton College, to his discovery in later life of his talent with a paint brush.
The man who once, as a swashbuckling young Fleet Air Arm officer, tamed the roaring Hellcats and Hurricanes in airborne battles everywhere from the searing skies of Africa to the icy blue canopy of the Arctic, eventually learned to tame his oil paints to sweep and swirl to his memories of those ships and planes – wartime seascapes and skyscapes have always been his particular specialities.
But now, a curtain is slowly falling on Hank’s extraordinary visions. In a cruel twist of fate for the 90-year-old artist, his eyesight is rapidly degenerating – he became registered blind last April, and now can only see misty and distorted shapes. I meet him at the Grant Bradley Gallery in Bedminster, Bristol, as his new exhibition is being hung around us, but his cloudy eyes are peering for a few moments in my direction before he realises we have met before.
This is why Hank has come to the conclusion that his latest exhibition will be his final exhibition.
“It is a swine, but there you go,” he says with a sad shrug of the shoulders. “I’ve kept painting for as long as I could – many in this collection have been painted even as my sight has worsened. But there comes a time when you simply can’t see enough. You have to think about calling it a day. I’ve got away with it for a while by including less and less detail – more sea, sky and land, less in the way of aircraft and battleships. It’s certainly changed my painting style. Some people seem to rather like it actually.”
Hank’s exhibition, entitled – with typical irony – Hank’s Blinders, opened on Saturday and runs until January 28 at the Bedminster Parade gallery. It’s the end of a story that began more than half a century ago, when Hank was given a “painting by numbers” set for his 34th birthday.
“My wife left it under the Christmas tree as a kind of joke – something that would have been more suitable for the kids,” he laughs. “But actually, I tried it, and I loved it. Got hooked almost immediately, and quite quickly progressed on to proper painting and found to my amazement that I wasn’t half bad at it.”
It was a similar story of late starting for Hank’s writing career – he says he had “never written anything before the age of 84″. Since then he has written three autobiographical books, the latest of which, A Dauber’s Progress was released on Friday.
“I started writing as a kind of therapy after a dreadful year in which I lost both my wife and son,” he explains. “But I’ve found I absolutely love the writing. Unlike the painting, I can simply keep increasing the size of the font on the computer as my eyesight deteriorates, so I should be able to keep going with that for some time yet.”
Hank is currently in the middle of writing his fourth book – a history of the Fleet Air Arm, entitled Sea Eagles Led By Penguins.
“The point is, when they set up the Fleet Air Arm, it was led by a bunch of admirals, none of whom had ever come anywhere near flying a plane,” he says. “It’s something that was still causing problems in my day in the 1940s. Penguins – experts in the water, but knew nothing about flying.”
Hank, who lives in Hotwells in the city, hopes the book will be released at some point next year. Meanwhile, he says he is concentrating on bringing his painting career to a suitable close. “I’m very grateful to the gallery for hosting the exhibition rent free,” he says. “And I’ve decided that proceeds from the sale of paintings during the exhibition will go to ABF The Soldiers’ Charity – formerly known as the Army Benevolent Fund, which supports servicemen and their families.”
Hank’s family has a long association with Bristol – running an engineering firm in Fishponds called George Adlam and Sons from 1820 – but he was always more drawn to a military life.
“My mother was determined that I should take an apprenticeship with the family firm because she knew it would get me out of front line service, and she was terrified of losing me,” he recalls. “But I was determined that as soon as I was 18 I’d join up. I was angry about what the Germans were doing in Europe.
“I wanted to be there, playing a part in pushing them back. In fact, I’d wanted to join the RAF, but they wouldn’t take me – I failed the medical because they weren’t happy with my bladder, of all things. So I joined the Royal Navy and spent a brief time as a sailor before I saw that they were advertising for the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Navy’s own flying division. For me, it was a wonderful opportunity – I would get the chance to fly after all. But I saw a lot of action during the Battle of the Atlantic, and I lost a great many of my best friends while we tried to protect those ships bringing supplies to Britain.
“That’s the hardest part, of course, losing friends. We also fought in the Battle of Britain, though everyone seems to forget the important role the Fleet Air Arm played in that. It wasn’t all about the Spitfires.”
But the most dramatic moment came when Hank was sent to the Pacific.
“I was involved in a big raid which took out an oil refinery in Sumatra,” he says. “That one strike resulted in much of the Japanese oil supply being destroyed, so it was a great achievement for the Fleet Air Arm. But that’s a long time ago now,” he adds, looking out across his paintings – many of which recreate the scenes of his youth as an airborne warrior.
“It’s a long, long time ago.”
by: This is Bristol
