Amber Films, 25 mins, 1978

Painter, photographer, modelmaker, sculptor and general sage, Laurie Wheatley was one of a group of working class artists that flourished in 1930s South Shields, at the same time as the Ashington Painters and the Spennymoor Settlement. In retirement he became involved with the early days of Amber. This gentle portrait follows him as he fulfills a lifetime’s ambition to make a life size sculpture, dispensing wisdom and self-deprecation all the while. The sculpture of a welder still stands above the stairs in Side Gallery.