Out of the Darkness: Mining Art Gallery marks Tom McGuinness centenary
A major retrospective in Bishop Auckland traces five decades of powerful work shaped by life underground and the emotional truth of County Durham’s coalfield communities
A century after his birth in a County Durham mining village, the bowed figures and shadowed tunnels of Tom McGuinness have returned to the fore in Bishop Auckland.
The town’s Mining Art Gallery is marking the centenary of one of the region’s most compelling artists with a major retrospective spanning more than 50 years of work shaped by life underground.
Born in Witton Park in 1926, McGuinness entered the mines in 1944 as a Bevin Boy. He would spend 39 years working below ground, developing a bold, distorted visual language defined by hunched bodies, compressed spaces and the eerie green and blue glazes that became his signature.
Encouraged by teachers at Darlington School of Art and the Spennymoor Settlement, he transformed the physical and emotional realities of mining into paintings that feel at once intimate and monumental.
“I find it difficult to express any feelings in words; that is why I paint… my art mirrors my life in the mining community,” he once said.
The exhibition, Tom McGuinness: Out of the Darkness, brings together oil paintings, sketches, etchings and lithographs, alongside rarely seen loans from various collections.
The display fills the entire first floor of the gallery, with additional works shown downstairs.
From February to June, portraits will take centre stage - including tender depictions of family members and colleagues, and one of the few self-portraits the artist produced - before displays shift in July to scenes of the Durham Miners’ Gala.
Corinne Aspel, McGuinness’s daughter, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to see a broad range of dad’s work, including personal family pieces and a true celebration of his life and incredible talent.”
Bob McManners, co-founder of the Gemini Collection of Mining Art, described the significance of his output: “Tom’s pictorial record of the coal mining industry is unrivalled. He worked for 39 years in the mines, painting daily what then seemed an indestructible industry.
“In his latter years he went on to graphically illustrate the social consequences of the aftermath of the demise of the coal industry.
“Tom was a quiet man who spoke fluently and powerfully to us through the medium of his art, which represents the personal diary of an underground miner. His work is his autobiography.”
Anne Sutherland, mining art & industrial heritage curator at The Auckland Project, added: “This exhibition celebrates a man whose work captures the emotional truth of mining life. McGuinness didn’t simply record what he saw; he interpreted what it felt like to be a miner. His art remains a powerful reminder of the resilience and identity of mining communities across the North East.”
The exhibition will run to December 2026. For opening times and more details, visit The Auckland Project website.