No place like home turf for Rugby artist

Andy Brown is a professional artist with a dazzling portfolio of sporting images – though he first caused a stir with a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II, made from teabags, in 2002.

The latter saw him become a Trivial Pursuit question – and he refreshed the image for last year’s diamond jubilee.

But despite that fame, he doesn’t regard it as trivial to be committing Butlin Road to canvas, in the place he calls home when not overseas.

Indeed, having taken the plunge to go full-time as an artist in 2019, largely based on the success of his emerging work painting baseball venues while working as a teacher in South Korea, sport stopped when covid hit the following year.

The first action he encountered getting back to normality was Sunday league football and that marked his return to action.

He told the Advertiser: “My plan of work ground to a halt and instead of touring American stadiums, I was at playing fields around Rugby.”

But he sees capturing moments such as those, as well as his Rugby Town visit, as playing an important role: “Football and Sunday league provide so much to the community but are so often overlooked.

"That’s the role of art, to take the ordinary and elevate it.”

In similar vein he captured York City’s former ground, Bootham Crescent, before it was redeveloped for housing.

He added: “These are landmarks where people congregated so I’m keen to get them recorded so people can see what life was like.”

A look at his website – andybrownstadiums.com – shows the variety of his work, embracing stadiums, players, original works, prints, books and more.

Baseball looms large and the website tells: ‘To date I have travelled to and painted over 120 baseball ballparks live in 15 different countries all within the nine innings of a game’.

But just as you get transfixed by, say, his work in the Dominican Republic, you suddenly spot a painting of the Great Central Way or action from Crick FC v the Jolly Abbot...