Auction buy shows artist still has much street cred.

IT'S not everybody's idea of a painting to hang in a prominent position at home.

But one auction bidder paid PS280 for a painting of a fire hydrant by the late South Tyneside artist Ken Watts.

Ken painted and sketched hundreds of streets scenes and sights in Jarrow and Hebburn, living in one town and then the other from the 1960s.

His meticulous observations of everyday street life ranged from yellow no parking lines and corner shops to drainpipes, gutters and walls with every brick individually painted.

His hydrant picture was sold by Newcastle auctioneers Anderson and Garland.

"Ken Watts had a special kind of vision and could see the unusual in the ordinary," said auctioneer John Anderson.

"He turned the ordinary into the extraordinary.

"He looked at things which people would walk past and think nothing of, like the fire hydrant, and he transformed it. He had a unique style and he ploughed his own furrow. He saw things in a different way."

Ken, a joiner by trade, kept up a prolific output which totalled almost 1,000 artworks.

His work recorded the changing face of the South Tyneside towns over more than 50 years and he was closely involved with Jarrow Art Group.

Ken died four years ago, aged 82, and left around 150 paintings and drawings in his Hebburn home.

He wrote: "I include everyday paraphernalia, of property for sale, street and shop names alongside colour-coded lights and road and pavement instructional markings. No dog has polluted, nor have humans discarded their unwanted items upon my highways and byways. " In his 70s, he embarked on a fine arts degree at Sunderland University, graduating with first-class honours.

His work has been exhibited across the region, and at the Serpentine Gallery in London's Hyde Park.

CAPTION(S):

Fire hydrant by