Sir Terry Frost

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:09

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a painter. He was brought up by his grandparents in Leamington Spa, left school at fourteen, and when the Second World War broke out became a commando. He was captured and spent four years in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. It was here he discovered he could draw and paint. It was a kind of university, he says. And once the war was over, he moved to the artists' community in St Ives, where he developed a passion for modern art and abstract form. Painting, he believes, is all about the imagination, and puts his to work on big, colourful works where familiar images are evoked in dazzling shapes, circles, stripes, and wedges. Now one of Britain's foremost artists, his work is to be found in the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and galleries all over the world. If it feels right in my head, my heart, and my big toe, he says, then I know I've got it right. He is Sir Terry Frost. So shape and colour, Terry, are of paramount importance to you. Is one more important than the other?

Sir Terry Frost1:32

Well, I think colour, because you see that when you're walking a med all the time.

Presenter1:36

But is there a right colour in the right place in abstract art?

Sir Terry Frost1:38

Well, for instance, I tried uh yellows. I did three hundred and sixty five yellows until I ran out of paper, and that was a valuable lesson to me.

Presenter1:48

Why?

Sir Terry Frost1:48

Well, because I di you you ask a person what colour and they say yellow. I I wonder which yellow.

Presenter1:55

Move.

Sir Terry Frost1:55

And if when I fan ed I could do 365.

Sir Terry Frost1:59

I then could do that with reds and blacks.

Presenter2:02

And blacks indeed, a lot of blacks indeed.

Sir Terry Frost2:03

And that was the most important thing I found out. But you find that out by trying and practicing.

Presenter2:08

But when you're doing an individual painting, you know, is there for that abstract painting the right yellow or the right black? And how do you know when it's right?

Sir Terry Frost2:16

Oh d

Sir Terry Frost2:17

Well, I usually know before I start.

Sir Terry Frost2:20

the kind of yellow I'm going to use. And if I if I'm in that strong dark yellow mood, as it were, then the colour the next colour and the next shape I use have to relate to that particular yellow I start with.

Presenter2:33

And they relate for you because, as we say, you feel it in your big toe, it's not in your heart. But would anyone else know, if if I came along and saw i one of your paintings, a you know, a piece of abstract art, how do I know it's the right colour?

Sir Terry Frost2:36

What's pressing your heart?

Sir Terry Frost2:46

You know the same way that I know used to know when I saw the girl.

Sir Terry Frost2:50

Walking up the parade in Levington Spa when I was about sixteen, I knew she was great.

Presenter2:55

She was a great

Sir Terry Frost2:57

Look beautiful. And you can tell that with the painting. You react naturally to it.

Presenter3:01

But when we look at a a portrait or a landscape, we can say, you know, even if we know nothing about art, we can say, That's good, that's right, because it looks at how do we know when we look at

Sir Terry Frost3:10

When you say that's right, that's good. I mean that's where most of the crap comes from, is by instant recognition. So you're not even looking at the painting, you're just saying it's a bunch of flowers or three apples on a plate or what have you. But you're not really looking.

Sir Terry Frost3:27

I mean, the difference in really looking and I mean Roger Nelton and I used to go to Palace to see our favorite Goya.

Sir Terry Frost3:33

We wouldn't speak to each other for two hours.

Sir Terry Frost3:37

And that and we'd have to have six recards afterwards to get over the shock of seeing a good work.

Presenter3:41

But in the beginning, going back to your early days, your paintings were often your vision of something real. And I'm thinking in particular about the one that you did in nineteen fifty, your Walk Along the Quay. Can you describe to me how how that came about?

Sir Terry Frost3:56

Well, that came about uh quite easily, really. If you lived in Cornwall in those days uh the streets are very narrow, back road when I lived, so that if my youngest son, the first son, tried,

Sir Terry Frost4:09

Everybody in those houses round knew and gave us every bit of advice in the world. By six AM in the morning they were all telling Kathleen you didn't give him enough water or you didn't so I used to get up and take the baby down the quay for a walk. Well then you're walking along and you're looking down at boats which are the tides out and are anchored up at different angles. And and

Sir Terry Frost4:32

Normally I'd done the boats, painted the boats in the sea.

Sir Terry Frost4:36

But that walk made me look down on them. And I happened to get in an auction in the second hand shop a a frame that was fifty by seventeen or something like that.

Presenter4:46

Tall, thin thing.

Sir Terry Frost4:47

a tall thin thing, and I walked up the canvas exactly the same way as I walked.

Sir Terry Frost4:53

Along the quay.

Presenter4:53

Just creating colour and shape as you would.

Sir Terry Frost4:56

Well, the colours are there and

Sir Terry Frost5:00

I mean I'm talking now with hindsight. At the time I was just looking at the colours, and they get very weathered.

Sir Terry Frost5:07

On boats, obviously. They get rough treatment and so they have a magic about them, which you wouldn't get by putting a blue paint, that same blue paint, straight on a bit of wood now. It's got the time, the struggle, the actual r there's almost a rock and roll in it. And by walking along and seeing those colours and the shapes, then you'll get invaluable lessons on how colour wraps round a certain shape.

Presenter5:31

But it was amazing that painting for 1950. You were before your time. Yes, I think.

Sir Terry Frost5:33

Yeah.

Sir Terry Frost5:34

Yes, I did get into a bit of trouble with that. Except Ben Nicholson liked it, and Pat Allen liked it, people like that.

Presenter5:39

But you were before your time.

Sir Terry Frost5:40

Yes, a little bit. But don't forget Kopka was doing wonderful um verticals in 1911.

Presenter5:48

Tell me about your first record.

Sir Terry Frost5:49

Our first record.

Sir Terry Frost5:52

is um

Sir Terry Frost5:53

Life is just a bowl of cherries. I've never been allowed to sing, so I can't sing Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries, but I think it's terrific'cause life is like that, and they're nearly always good ones.

Speaker 36:05

Work, you save your worry so much you can't take it all When you go, go, go, so keep You're beating it's the berries So the strongest oak must hold Butty, wop biddy, wop up it up

Speaker 16:20

Uh

Speaker 36:23

Life is just a bullet cherry, so live a life of it all

Speaker 36:30

Life is just a bowl of cherries, don't make it serious.

Presenter6:36

The Mills Brothers, the Boswell Sisters, and Bing Crosbie, singing Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries. Superb. Wonderful, isn't that? You came to art, Terry Frost, in the four years that you spent in Prisoner of War camp Stahlag three eight three in Bavaria, which was undoubtedly vast and soul destroying.

Sir Terry Frost6:53

Mm.

Presenter6:53

Where had you been captured? How did you come to

Sir Terry Frost6:55

Oh, by chance, I was in the commandos at the time. We went to retake Malamy Aerodrome in uh Crete.

Sir Terry Frost7:04

But unfortunately we had vicious gales and we couldn't land at the time we should do and usual things go wrong with the best of plans. And we just by the time we landed it was almost all over. The lines had broken and everybody was in retreat and so we just went forward, about 200 of us, to take the line for as long as we could, which was not what we were trained for. So we acted as infantry.

Sir Terry Frost7:28

for about seven days, without the weapons, as it were.

Presenter7:31

Cool.

Sir Terry Frost7:31

And uh that was pretty tough.

Presenter7:34

It was nineteen forty one and you were rounded up and taken to various places but ended up, as I say, in in Bavaria. How how did you come across art in the camp? I mean, what is it going on?

Sir Terry Frost7:35

Mm-hmm.

Sir Terry Frost7:37

Thank you very much.

Sir Terry Frost7:39

Bavaria.

Sir Terry Frost7:43

Uh well, um we had a uh an oboe.

Sir Terry Frost7:47

You know, tramp.

Sir Terry Frost7:49

who slept on the second bed at the top, that's right, in our room. And he used was a wonderful story teller, cause he's a very intelligent chap.

Sir Terry Frost7:58

And he used to read books to us and uh

Sir Terry Frost8:03

He could also draw caricatures.

Sir Terry Frost8:06

And so I tried to do caricatures,'cause I knew I could draw at school. I remembered being able to draw at school.

Sir Terry Frost8:13

But I couldn't do caricatures, I could get a likeness.

Sir Terry Frost8:16

So immediately I got a likeness. Everybody wanted one. And so I then did my bartering.

Presenter8:22

But exactly. I mean, where'd you get the materials from?

Sir Terry Frost8:25

Well, if they gave me um half their pillow, which was Hessian,

Sir Terry Frost8:31

I could paint that with the glue of the soup.

Sir Terry Frost8:34

Which was barley, you see.

Presenter8:36

But the soup they gave you to eat.

Sir Terry Frost8:37

Yeah, that was barley-like, so that would be it's a good ground for painting.

Presenter8:39

It was that stiff was it

Presenter8:44

And what about the brushes?

Sir Terry Frost8:45

Well, I had a boy who was very good at pinching the hairs off the horses when they came in for the sanitation jobs they had to do. They would he would nip out and they get the

Sir Terry Frost8:56

hairs off the hor near the horse's hooves, you know, and he could make them into a lovely brush for me.

Presenter8:59

And it

Presenter9:01

So you you did everybody, did you? I mean everybody wanted a souvenir I suppose.

Sir Terry Frost9:04

I did about time to portrait yet.

Sir Terry Frost9:07

It's very interesting. I did um

Sir Terry Frost9:10

I forgot the name of the chap now, Mick Moore, who had the best

Sir Terry Frost9:14

room and the best place, because he could provide you with a map of German defences or and he could provide the Germans with the best coffee in exchange for various things.

Sir Terry Frost9:25

And I had to do his portrait. Well, when I was asked to do his portrait, I knew I was on the tops, you know. But what I didn't know was I was doing the portrait over where our lads had got a machine gun and were training down below. See, we you were always used. But I was glad I didn't know, because I'm a proper coward on that kind of thing.

Presenter9:42

So somewhere, you know, in in in Britain there exist lots of original Terry Frost.

Sir Terry Frost9:46

Lots of original Terry Franklin.

Presenter9:49

What was it like?

Sir Terry Frost9:49

Uh I was surprised how good it was actually.

Presenter9:53

Yeah.

Sir Terry Frost9:53

Yeah, I I did do it quite well.

Presenter9:56

Tell me about your second record.

Sir Terry Frost9:59

Well, my sons were at the Comprehensive in Bambury,

Sir Terry Frost10:03

Uh two of them, or three of them, or four of them, I think.

Presenter10:06

Have you got so many?

Sir Terry Frost10:06

Well, I got five, but I can't anyway, they were there and um they did Oh, what a lovely war. Well, why they liked it, they could actually swear in one part, officially. And I remember them being so thrilled when they used that word bloody, you know. They didn't realize it's by my lady, really. That's what it comes from, you know.

Speaker 310:27

Now it's a lovely boy

Speaker 310:29

Who wouldn't be a soldier and? Oh, it's a shame to take the blame As soon as your body is gone.

Speaker 310:35

We are just as heavy as they, but we never get up till the sergeant brings our breakfast up to bed.

Speaker 310:41

How, now, how it's a lovely warning.

Speaker 310:44

What do we want with eggs of hand when we've got lump and apple jam?

Speaker 310:49

Four falls right turn as we spend the money we earn on

Presenter10:56

The theatre workshop singing Oh, It's a Lovely War from the 1963 production of Oh, What a Lovely War, directed by Joan Littlewood.

Presenter11:05

You were also, um it seems, Terry Frost, one of the prison camp's self appointed morale boosters, weren't you? You you kind of kept their peckers up a bit.

Sir Terry Frost11:14

Well, I don't think I did that. The one of the strongest blokes of that was my best first art teacher, was Adrian Heath. He was into escaping. He was organizing it. And he was fantastic.

Presenter11:24

What kind of escapes would then

Sir Terry Frost11:25

Well, building tunnels and uh what he actually got that carried out in a post office sack.

Sir Terry Frost11:30

But somebody let them down on the last minute and the door wasn't, he couldn't get out.

Presenter11:35

But wasn't there also, I mean, because you were men of imagination, which is the point really, a train that left every night?

Sir Terry Frost11:42

Oh well we had you get to the stage where

Sir Terry Frost11:46

I think the Germans agreed that we were going nutty because we had table tennis matches without a table, you see. So all the crowds would be there watching every stroke and clapping and all the rest of it. And then we um the train used to run for Blighty and it was too

Sir Terry Frost12:04

small huts together and the the lads inside would be shoving straw and stuff up the chimney so the smoke was coming out and then I would send for the taxi, which was two men, one with a blanket over his back, and I'd get on the back and they'd ride me along and all my hut would sha wave me off and the b boys would be opening the window in the train ready for me to go in and the smoke would come out and we'd leave for Blighty for a weekend.

Presenter12:29

And did other people climb aboard?

Sir Terry Frost12:31

Oh, yes, that train rang regularly. And then the the Germans thought we were all going mad, or were Stalag happy, as they called it, so they agreed, if we signed that we wouldn't escape, that they would take us out into the woods. But I said I'd never go again, because I collected flowers.

Sir Terry Frost12:49

And it was so wonderful to have the freedom and to see the things growing.

Sir Terry Frost12:53

And I was very upset. I thought I couldn't I wouldn't go again.

Presenter12:57

Why not?

Sir Terry Frost12:57

Uh

Sir Terry Frost12:58

What?

Sir Terry Frost12:59

To have freedom and not have it.

Sir Terry Frost13:01

I couldn't face it, all the the beautiful things, uh so I

Presenter13:05

Because you used to paint uh nature sort of beyond the wire, didn't you?

Sir Terry Frost13:07

Nature, sort of beyond the wire, isn't it? Well, I did all the views from everywhere in the hut, yes. And you see, then you can love a piece of grass or a leaf that isn't there the next morning.

Sir Terry Frost13:18

And that's any my my last leaf went off the tree.

Sir Terry Frost13:23

I almost cried leaning against the hut because I'd lost it. I hadn't seen my last leaf go with the cold, you know? Well, you won't get that in normal life. I mean, there are moments when, because you haven't got any food, I think you're more alert to thoughts like that. So a blade of grass is very important to you.

Presenter13:40

So, how did you react when you got true freedom? You know, when you really did get back to Blighty, must have been a good idea.

Sir Terry Frost13:45

Well, the May Blossom was out, you can tell what that's like. That was the most tremendous tummy feeling from the scent and the look was marvellous, the May Blossom. But you see, you didn't get any counseling or anything like that. All you got was egg, bacon, fried bread, sausage, the lot. Great. Well, you we haven't eaten anything like that in years.

Presenter14:05

But what you had out of it all was the knowledge of what you wanted to do with the rest of your life.

Sir Terry Frost14:09

Oh, absolutely, yes.

Presenter14:11

Record number three.

Sir Terry Frost14:13

Oh, and then this Stockhausen, our radio wasn't very often tuned for Radio 3, but on this occasion it was. And I thought, what the hell's that? That's marvellous.

Presenter14:54

Part of Stockhausen's Hymnen, Anthems for Electronic and Concrete Sounds, which you, Terry Frost, bumped into in the sixties. Um how often do you play it?

Sir Terry Frost15:04

Well, I played it quite a bit at first because I didn't have to understand it because I didn't know about music. I was very lucky.

Sir Terry Frost15:13

It was fantastic sound to me. I thought, wow, that's wonderful.

Presenter15:16

Why? Can you explain that?

Sir Terry Frost15:17

Well, it I don't have I couldn't explain it, but it was something I'd never heard the like of before.

Sir Terry Frost15:24

and therefore I was interested.

Sir Terry Frost15:26

It made me interested.

Presenter15:27

Did it inspire you in any way in terms of your own work, your painting?

Sir Terry Frost15:31

Well, I think it makes you be more determined to try and find out what you can do, rather than being satisfied.

Presenter15:38

Rather than do the conventional.

Sir Terry Frost15:40

Yes. I think if you don't make a contribution to art

Sir Terry Frost15:44

Then you should pack it up, you know. Just carry on painting your roses and dried oranges.

Presenter15:49

You make them sound so boring.

Sir Terry Frost15:52

Really are, Mashley.

Presenter15:54

So the y the the twenty three year old salesman who went to war came home, this man uh who knew he wanted to spend his life as an artist. Your family well uh as I was saying in the beginning, it was your grandparents really who brought you up, wasn't it? What did the what did he, your father your grandfather, do for a living?

Sir Terry Frost16:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sir Terry Frost16:10

Oh, my grandfather actually was the last p one.

Sir Terry Frost16:15

Proprietor of the Bath Chair.

Sir Terry Frost16:18

You know the one that used to pull along in the street?

Presenter16:20

And you left school at fourteen to go to work. That would have been, what, nineteen twenty-nine, so the Great Depression was all.

Sir Terry Frost16:23

When the

Sir Terry Frost16:26

Yes, I saw the hunger marches, people like that, which of course d decided my politics for me forever.

Presenter16:33

And did you get a job? Could you get one?

Sir Terry Frost16:35

Yes, I got a job at Curries when I I had to dress the windows.

Sir Terry Frost16:41

I could use

Sir Terry Frost16:42

crepe paper and make it do things.

Sir Terry Frost16:45

But of course we used to spend a lot of time looking at the girls in Francis opposite who were doing what these Chapman brothers do nowadays and call it art, you know. They used to be putting underwear on the models and of course I liked watching them and so we had a great sort of contest on window dressing. Me with bicycles and radios and them with underwear. They gave me one every time.

Presenter17:02

They were

Presenter17:06

And he worked in a bakery, as

Sir Terry Frost17:07

Oh yes, I did. I put the cream and jam in the doughnut, which was fantastic.

Presenter17:12

Very good training for an abstract doctor.

Sir Terry Frost17:13

Oh yes, I saw all the colours and shapes. Trouble was that I used to give one squeeze of jam for the doughnut and one squeeze of cream and then one for myself, and I became very white, very pale.

Presenter17:25

But after the war, when you came back, Leamington Spa just wasn't for you. Wasn't for you.

Sir Terry Frost17:30

Well, it was very d I did ha you had time to either take up your old job, you've got so long.

Sir Terry Frost17:38

And uh I mean I was determined to paint.

Presenter17:42

But you went to St Ives. Why why did you

Sir Terry Frost17:44

Well, if you come from a working family.

Sir Terry Frost17:47

And uh everybody's always worked at Coventry.

Sir Terry Frost17:51

In the car industry all my uncles were trained, you know, they were apprenticed and they were good at their jobs.

Sir Terry Frost17:57

And there was me being

Sir Terry Frost17:59

An outsider, really?

Presenter18:01

Record number four.

Sir Terry Frost18:03

Uh Joseph Locke.

Sir Terry Frost18:05

Yes, well, that's I'll take you home again, Kathleen. That's my dear wife, who's put up with me for over fifty years.

Speaker 318:12

I'll take you home again cap lead Across the ocean wide and wide

Speaker 318:26

Your heart has ever been since first you were my blushing bride, Laura.

Presenter18:42

Joseph Locke, and I'll take you home again, Kathleen.

Presenter18:45

So you, um Terry and Kathleen, down in St Ives after the war, you had a small baby by this time. How did you earn a living?

Presenter18:53

What did you do?

Sir Terry Frost18:54

Well, I had um I think um four hundred pounds back pay.

Sir Terry Frost18:59

in the bank when I came home, and I think we used sixty pound to get married.

Sir Terry Frost19:04

Cath had had sixty pounds, but she'd spent it on a holiday, which I was furious about when I found out.

Sir Terry Frost19:10

Before she married me. And then

Sir Terry Frost19:13

I managed to get odd jobs.

Presenter19:16

Doing what?

Sir Terry Frost19:17

waiting in the

Sir Terry Frost19:18

Uh I used to wait on um

Sir Terry Frost19:21

and the artists.

Sir Terry Frost19:22

I always remember this particular was Ben Nicholson, Willie Barnes Graham I think, and Barbara Hepworth and Brian Winter and Brian who was a wonderful man saved me completely because I was listening to them talking about abstract art. Well you have to take the soup off and keep the balance. Well I Brian could see that I was so interested that I had lost the balance and he put his hand up under the tray and saved me which I thought was fantastic. Never said a word, just did it.

Presenter19:50

You eventually went to work for Barbara Hepworth, as well as the mm-hmm.

Sir Terry Frost19:52

Yes, I did, yes.

Presenter19:53

What did you do for her?

Sir Terry Frost19:54

Oh well, we were doing contrapuntal form for the Fifty One Festival. You know, all this fuss about the Millennium. That Fifty One Festival was so marvellous. And I worked on the stone.

Sir Terry Frost20:06

Which is

Sir Terry Frost20:07

I could carve, you see.

Sir Terry Frost20:10

But she taught me real carving.

Sir Terry Frost20:12

If you couldn't ease up for a second with Barbara, she was a tartar, ruthless tartar. But you liked her? Oh, of course. I got chocolate biscuits. I was the only one who got chocolate biscuits. All the others had play.

Presenter20:23

But you hadn't had any formal artistic training, so you went to Camberwell Art School in, I think, 48.

Sir Terry Frost20:29

Hmm.

Presenter20:29

And you had a very special tutor, Victor Prince.

Sir Terry Frost20:32

Victor Oh yes, we came the first day I was painting, Victor was in.

Sir Terry Frost20:36

And he looked at what I was doing, and said,'I see you've finished already.

Sir Terry Frost20:39

I said, Well, that's not what I really do that's what I really do on the other side.

Presenter20:44

Well, you turned it over and

Sir Terry Frost20:44

Turn it out to show what it is.

Presenter20:45

It was abstract on the side.

Sir Terry Frost20:46

No, it was a portrait that I'd done before I came to Camberwell.

Sir Terry Frost20:50

And he looked at that and he said, Come ahead, sign.

Sir Terry Frost20:54

Don't you come in the Art School any more, he said. Go round the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, and the Modern Galleries, and see what's going on. What a wonderful teacher

Presenter21:03

Because he thought what he thought you'd learn more by going

Sir Terry Frost21:05

Learned all by going and seeing the art, and he was right.

Presenter21:08

And when you eventually, as you did, produced one of your first pieces of abstract art and and showed it to the principal of the art school, I think it was this we've got it here actually, Madrigal, based on a WH Orden poem about a collier who comes home from the pit.

Sir Terry Frost21:18

Oh yeah, sure.

Speaker 121:18

But Patrick

Sir Terry Frost21:22

So from the

Presenter21:24

And it's very dark and black and full of abstract shapes.

Sir Terry Frost21:26

Full of abstract shapes. And he meets his wife, it gets warm at lunchtime.

Presenter21:31

And those are where all the reds I see. And what are these whites here?

Sir Terry Frost21:33

And so

Sir Terry Frost21:36

Well, the whites of the light after you come out of the mine, you get y uh if you come out of a mine and you hit light.

Sir Terry Frost21:42

You bring it it really is fierce.

Presenter21:44

Yes, and you did that. Let me have a look in 1949. What did the principal of Camberwell Art School?

Sir Terry Frost21:47

Yeah, yeah.

Sir Terry Frost21:51

Well, you must remember Cameroon was a damn good school and uh for the summer work all the work was put up and he Daniels gave a crit on everything. When he got the mine he said, This would be all right as long as it's not only an end in itself or something, you know, and completely not an end in itself, that's right, completely messed me up.

Sir Terry Frost22:12

It sort of wrote me off.

Sir Terry Frost22:14

And I thought, well, he doesn't know anything about art, does he?

Presenter22:18

Record number five.

Sir Terry Frost22:20

This is a sort of I'm doing this for dear old Alan Lowndes who was supposed to be a naive painter. Naive, wonderful painter.

Sir Terry Frost22:28

The only person I've met with a real photographic memory could he could tell you a book, or a poem, or General Ney's positions at war to anything.

Sir Terry Frost22:38

And this he could he stuttered. And of course Stanley Holloway don't stutter, but when Allan did this stuttering it was beautiful. He knew every word.

Speaker 322:46

Now Albert had heard about lions, how they was ferocious and wild.

Speaker 322:52

To see Wallace lying so peaceful

Speaker 322:55

Well, it didn't seem right to the child.

Speaker 322:59

So straightway the brave little fellow, not showing a morsel of fear, Took his stick with his hos's head handle, And pushed it in Wallace's ear.

Speaker 323:13

You could see that the lion didn't like it.

Speaker 323:16

For giving a kind of a role.

Speaker 323:20

He pulled Albert inside the cage with him.

Speaker 323:23

and swallowed the little lad oh.

Speaker 323:27

Then Par who had seen the occurrence,

Speaker 323:30

And didn't know what to do next.

Speaker 323:33

Said Mother.

Speaker 323:35

Yon lion's that, Albert

Speaker 323:39

And mother said, Well, I am vexed.

Presenter23:43

Stanley Holloway performing The Lion and Albert by Marriott Edgar, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty two. So by the sixties, Terry Frost, you were attracting a lot of attention, and by the seventies you were really part of the English mainstream, weren't you, with one man exhibitions everywhere and so on.

Sir Terry Frost23:59

Yeah.

Sir Terry Frost24:00

Tight period.

Presenter24:01

Mm.

Sir Terry Frost24:01

That was a great period for me.

Presenter24:02

And and you taught and you travelled. You travelled all over the place. What kinds of places inspired you and why? Can you describe them to me?

Sir Terry Frost24:10

Cyprus is the place that I think that uh inspired me the most because I think it was the attitude of the people and the feeling of the space

Sir Terry Frost24:21

And the fact of uh

Sir Terry Frost24:23

the sun and the moon. I mean, I've I've done lots of things between two gods because I walked out one morning early for a pee and the sun was just coming up and the moon was up. So for a moment

Sir Terry Frost24:37

I knew that I was between two gods.

Sir Terry Frost24:40

And of course since as soon as you drop that thought, you're back on your feet and you've got to rush to the toilet. But the point is, you get that moment, and I've never forgotten that moment, with the blue moon and the orange, and I stood between it by chance.

Presenter24:55

So so you would say that that what you do is go out and sort of feel the landscape or feel the and go then go back to your studio and and create it from your imagination or let your imagination roam afterwards in mad power.

Sir Terry Frost25:03

Yeah.

Sir Terry Frost25:06

It's very personal um sensations which you use. I mean I coming back from Allegate one night and it was icy and snowing.

Sir Terry Frost25:17

And the moon was up.

Sir Terry Frost25:18

And the all the meadows.

Sir Terry Frost25:21

were white, but blue white because of the moon.

Sir Terry Frost25:24

And it was so cold, but it was such a wonderful to be driving through that blue whiteness.

Sir Terry Frost25:30

Well I did a big

Sir Terry Frost25:31

White paint in that vegetative got a

Presenter25:33

But are your paintings then always

Presenter25:36

you know, originally inspired by something or, you know, and and as it were your representation of something, or are they sometimes just color and shape for their own sakes?

Sir Terry Frost25:40

As it were your rep

Sir Terry Frost25:47

I have done a few pure abstracts, yes. I've probably done as many pure abstracts as as more emotional ones that uh

Sir Terry Frost25:56

Pure abstract is very good for you. You've got to get your construction right. You know, that's the constructional is my still life.

Sir Terry Frost26:02

The geometrical division of the flat surface, because that's what it is. It is a flat surface.

Sir Terry Frost26:08

And that's what a lot of people who paint flowers and oranges don't understand, you see.

Presenter26:11

What so if you paint a leaf, it's still a bit of green paint.

Sir Terry Frost26:14

It's still a bit of green painting. You've got to remember that. So you've got to because it will make its own space. Every time you put a bit of colour on, it makes its own space, whether you like it or not.

Presenter26:25

Record number six.

Sir Terry Frost26:26

Now this is Ediksati.

Sir Terry Frost26:29

When my Merit some of my American friends come over and stay with me,

Sir Terry Frost26:33

Which means we have a bit of a night ahead. In the morning for breakfast, I just put that record on. I don't want anything else, I just have that. And I know that it makes everybody feel better.

Speaker 327:00

Uh

Presenter27:44

Rheinbert de Leu, playing part of Eric Sarty's Gyminopodie number three. What is it about that music, Terry, that touches you? Why do you like it so much?

Sir Terry Frost27:52

Well, you can hear every single note and you've got time to think before the next one comes. You're not relying upon a tune, as it were.

Sir Terry Frost28:01

It's

Sir Terry Frost28:02

It's the relationship of the silence between one note and the next and the

Sir Terry Frost28:08

The loudness of the next note in relationship to the softness of the one before or the third one along. I just think it's.

Sir Terry Frost28:16

It's very much like abstract art to me. It's pure music. You've got time.

Sir Terry Frost28:22

To be you and to listen.

Sir Terry Frost28:24

Whereas others you've got to wait for a tune.

Presenter28:28

You you've settled and have been for a long time now in in Cornwall in Newlyn, not St Ives. You went to Newlyn. Tell me about your studio there. Can you describe it to me?

Sir Terry Frost28:38

Oh, that's a bit tricky, isn't it? Describing the studio, I can tell you it's full of a mess of work, because I'm a very scruffy worker.

Sir Terry Frost28:46

Uh not when I'm actually painting, but I drop everything all over the place.

Sir Terry Frost28:51

I've got a lovely studio in the garden actually, which we have

Presenter28:53

But can have you got a view from it? Can you see things?

Sir Terry Frost28:55

Um the best view is from my house.

Sir Terry Frost28:59

which is right over New Lin Harbour.

Sir Terry Frost29:01

And St Michael's Mount. It's absolutely beautiful. Then, if I walk out of my studio, I look over.

Sir Terry Frost29:08

To where the sun sets.

Presenter29:09

And what about that blue moon you love so much?

Sir Terry Frost29:11

Oh, well, that blue moon the biggest moons you get in Cornwall. I mean some you'll get a shock if you like. I was walking over to see Sidney Graham, the poet, one night.

Sir Terry Frost29:20

And

Sir Terry Frost29:22

You've had a pregnancy.

Sir Terry Frost29:24

Like that.

Sir Terry Frost29:25

and the biggest moon I'd ever seen suddenly was there.

Sir Terry Frost29:30

It was almost too much to take.

Sir Terry Frost29:32

But it was wha I was in the dark, you see, and walking to the pub.

Sir Terry Frost29:37

At Madrid.

Sir Terry Frost29:38

To hear Sidney be rude to me as soon as I get there, but he was always rude to everybody.

Presenter29:43

Number seven.

Sir Terry Frost29:44

Number seven.

Sir Terry Frost29:48

Oh, Mozart. Well, I was asked to do by Harvey's wine people, asked, I think Howard Odskin, myself and two others, I can't remember, about four others, to do

Sir Terry Frost29:59

The covers for their c records.

Sir Terry Frost30:03

And I listened to quite a few, and I like this one the best.

Presenter30:06

And did you listen while he painted this?

Sir Terry Frost30:08

No.

Presenter30:08

Why not?

Sir Terry Frost30:09

No, because I had to get on with the painting. I don't listen, I never have anything on when I'm painting.

Sir Terry Frost30:14

I know a lot of people always have music on. My son does.

Sir Terry Frost30:17

But I never have music on.

Presenter30:19

But it would be wrong to say that this piece of Mozart inspired the painting on the sleeve.

Sir Terry Frost30:24

I think piano the piano music.

Sir Terry Frost30:28

Was a lot to do with the rhythm.

Sir Terry Frost30:30

Honestly.

Presenter31:30

Raphael Orozko playing part of the first movement of Mozart's piano concerto number twenty six in D major, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutroy.

Presenter31:40

Now it's Sir Terry Frost. How much did that knighthood mean to you, Terry?

Sir Terry Frost31:45

Well, it was a bit of a knockout, actually. I never expected anything at all. I mean, after all, if you've got to eighty two and nothing's happened, you know nothing is going to happen.

Presenter31:54

So now you're one of the posh people, like those people you're doing.

Sir Terry Frost31:56

Now I've joined the establishment now, and I was always going to cut at the knees, you know.

Presenter32:00

But do you feel you've done it all now? What are you? You're eighty three?

Sir Terry Frost32:03

Oh no, I've never been so busy in my life. I've got uh the Brussels show to do, I've got Show for London in October, I've got Dublin in

Sir Terry Frost32:13

July, I think it is. I go to Dublin in June to talk about British art of the fifties, I think, with the

Presenter32:18

But do you worry about it all, having all of that to do?

Sir Terry Frost32:21

If I didn't know that to do, I'd be ill. I'm never ill if I'm working. I'm only ill when I'm not working. Then I then you think about all your aches and pains. If you're working, there's nothing wrong.

Presenter32:31

And as for a desert island, well

Presenter32:34

Yeah.

Sir Terry Frost32:36

Oh, I have a wonderful time. Wonderful. I love being by myself in the studio. So important.

Sir Terry Frost32:42

You can think what you like.

Sir Terry Frost32:44

Make all the kind of marks you like, where you like.

Sir Terry Frost32:48

If you've got the nerve.

Sir Terry Frost32:50

That's what it's all about, courage.

Presenter32:53

Last record

Sir Terry Frost32:54

Last record

Sir Terry Frost32:56

Ah, T for Two. Now that's a very special one for me because my old friend Roger Hilton, who I think was about the rudest artist in the world.

Sir Terry Frost33:07

but also one of the kindest and sweetest and cleverest I've ever met.

Sir Terry Frost33:12

But he was a bloody nuisance he got me thrown out of every restaurant in London.

Sir Terry Frost33:16

But

Sir Terry Frost33:17

Before he died, when he'd had a stroke, I went in to see him and he knew that I knew that he was going to die.

Sir Terry Frost33:24

and he tried to sing that for me, which I thought was fantastic.

Sir Terry Frost33:29

Teeth for two. You know, I thought, wonderful, the old boy is doing it for me And he did, and he was dead the next morning.

Speaker 333:39

To you upon my knee Just T for two and two for T

Speaker 333:47

Yeah.

Speaker 333:48

And you were me alone.

Presenter34:07

Max Bygraves and T for Two with Victor Sylvester and his orchestra. If you could only take one of those eight records, Terry, which one would you choose?

Sir Terry Frost34:15

FIFA 2

Sir Terry Frost34:17

No doubt about that. He's given me all the most wonderful, dangerous times I've ever had in my life with Roger.

Presenter34:17

Yeah.

Presenter34:24

What about your book?

Sir Terry Frost34:26

Ah.

Sir Terry Frost34:27

My bank book.

Presenter34:29

Why is there so much in it?

Sir Terry Frost34:31

Well yeah, but Kath would spend a lot if she could get her hands on that. I mean I would take actually um

Sir Terry Frost34:40

I would like to take lots of sheets, a blank book.

Sir Terry Frost34:44

Because I've always had a problem.

Sir Terry Frost34:46

With imagination and memory. I mean, people will say, of course, memory must come first, but I don't know. I think imagination sometimes sparks all things.

Sir Terry Frost34:55

So I'd like to write.

Sir Terry Frost34:57

Something to bad.

Sir Terry Frost34:58

Imagination and memory. Try and sort it out.

Presenter35:01

And what about your luxury?

Sir Terry Frost35:03

Luxury. Well, now that might surprise you, but I thought I'd take a mirror, so that I could have somebody to talk to.

Sir Terry Frost35:09

and have a curse at now and again.

Presenter35:13

Sir Terry Frost, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Terry Frost35:17

Thank you.

Presenter35:18

Yeah.

Sir Terry Frost35:18

Yeah.

Speaker 135:25

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co dot uk slash radio four.

Speaker 336:11

Uh