Versatile and colourful artist, one of the Pitmen Painters, Jack Harrison was the son of a miner, born at Waterhouses, County Durham, moving to Ashington, Northumberland, in 1909. When 13 he started at Ellington Colliery, went to Bothal Pit at Ashington Colliery at 15 and worked until he was made redundant at 63. Harrison endured long and unsociable shifts, working hard coal in cramped conditions for meagre pay, rising to be a deputy overman. In the 1950s he joined the Ashington Art Group, consistently experimental and individual in his approach, “although it was often difficult to buy paints and materials and framing my work has been very costly”. The Group’s paintings went to Germany and China, the first post-Communist Western art show there.