Pitman turned artist Bob Olley donates paintings to museum

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A miner turned painter has donated to a museum 23 paintings which show the grime, tragedies and humour of life underground.

Artist Bob Olley, whose work is on display in the King Coal exhibition at South Shields Museum, said he did not want pit life to be forgotten.

Mr Olley worked at Whitburn Colliery which closed 50 years ago.

A spokesman for the museum said Mr Olley was a "star and philanthropist".

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The display also features photographs and recorded interviews with miners over the decades, as well as a video recreation of a garden shed that miners sat in as they picketed during the miners' strike in 1984-85.

Mr Olley said comments from his young relatives put into sharp focus how fast mining was slipping into the past.

His young granddaughter, who was studying a painting Mr Olley had created of a pit pony and its driver pulling a tub of coal, once asked: "Why is the little horse in a dark hole under the ground?"

"The question made me realise how quickly the era of the once mighty coal industry is passing into history," Mr Olley said.

"Hopefully this body of mining art will help future generations to understand and appreciate the impact that coal and the winning of it had on the psyche of the people here in the North East, and make questions like the one my granddaughter asked a little easier to explain."

A video of Mr Olley at work in his studio has been viewed on the South Shields Museum and Art Gallery thousands of times

A spokeswoman for the museum said the region's coal mining heritage still sparked passion and strong reactions.

She said a video of painter Bob Olley in action on the museum's website had been played thousands of times.

Geoff Woodward, manager at the museum said the exhibition, which also featured "heart-wrenching" details of fatal tragedies in pits over the years, had been extremely popular.

The King Coal exhibition ends today, but Mr Olley's paintings will go into storage be put back on display at future exhibitions.

King Coal focuses on life at all of South Tyneside's pits including Hebburn, Whitburn and Westoe.

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Bob Olley at work in his studio

Mr Olley worked at Whitburn Colliery before it closed in the 1960s