Artist Alfred Halliday is very much a local lad and many of you will no doubt remember him from the days when he ran Peak Autos Spares in Glossop at the bottom of Shrewsbury Street many years ago. What many of you will probably not know is that before running Peak Auto Spares, during and since he was and has been a highly prolific and exceptional artist working in multiple and varied mediums. He describes his creativity as being his life force his complete reason for being. In fact it can be true to say that Alfred is somewhat of a Renaissance Man, Alfred is a writer, a poet and also a multi instrumentalist jazz and blues musician.

Until recently Alfred gigged many times with his beloved and cherished friend, blues legend the late Victor Brox. When he was young and attended Glossop Grammar School he excelled in art but sadly never got the chance to go to art college or take it further. Alfred began working at Peak Auto Spares at the latter end of the 1960s, but cars were not his passion. His father owned two shops in Hyde and Glossop and Alfred felt that it was his duty to help and support his father. It was during this time that great works of art were born! In-between serving customers, at the back his shop, using hardboard, car paint sample pots he created large scale industrial scenes. The art emerged in vast abundance and it can be true to say that most of Alfred’s work from the 1970s was indeed created in the shop.

 In Alfred’s words, “my creativity is a wild beast, an indomitable life force that could not be caged. The creative force felt stronger than me, I felt compelled to create art and despite working in my car spares shop on a daily basis I HAD to create art on whatever materials I could find”.

During the mid 1980s Alfred’s painting style changed and it did so very dramatically it metamorphosized from a fairly traditional impressionist style to the strident modern art that we see of his today. This did not happen gradually like with most artists but all of a sudden on one evening and Alfred describes this as his complete and utter baptism of fire! Gabrielle his daughter remembers her father waking both her and her mother up in the middle of the night, he was in floods of tears exclaiming that his style had changed. In this first modern piece Alfred had used only three colours white, black and red, it is stark, it is eerie and it is compelling. Alfred describes this painting as being the aftermath of a nuclear war, bodies are disjointed and eyes fixed. Even though this painting is untitled it is an important painting because it marks the artist’s ultimate transition from traditional to modern and it will be featuring at Alfred Halliday’s exhibition at the Glossop Labour Club this September.

From that night in the 1980s Alfred has continued to create all kinds of art in all kinds of ways, he has painted on bottles, plates, tiles and even once on an old leather coat! He also spent many years carving in sandstone but alas due to his failing health he could no longer sustain this. Alfred believes that Picasso has had the strongest influence on his work; in Alfred’s words, “His genius was so refreshingly different for it’s time his vision completely hits me, the shapes, the colour, the drama. Through his expression he opened the doors completely liberating modern artists for decades to come”.

Another strong influence on Alfred’s work is his love of music, particularly jazz and he has created many art works in the past spontaneously after returning home from a gig;  he states that he aims to incorporate the energy and movement of jazz within his art irrelevant of the subject matter.

After a lengthy spell in hospital in 2016 Alfred returned home a physically much weaker man he felt that he did not have the energy to handle large canvases and mix oil paint but was desperate to create. By sheer chance his daughter Gabrielle received a gift in the post it was packaged in a smooth white packaging material called Foamex, it was lightweight but sturdy and Alfred could not resist the temptation of creating art upon it. A friend also recommended Sharpie pens and it was a match made in heaven, Alfred was smitten and continues to create art this way today.

Alfred believes that when he is no longer on this earth he will still find a way to create for he states that “these works have a life and an energy all of their own they will continue beyond me to dance, to sing and to love”.
