Joe Scarborough (artist)

[4] After leaving school, Scarborough began work as a laboratory assistant at the Batchelors processed food company.

[6][2] He then became a face worker at the colliery at Thorpe Hesley,[2] and was inspired to paint by the contrast of the darkness of the mines and the lightness of the real world above the ground.

[1] In 1968 disenchantment with the pits led to numerous jobs - labourer, municipal park gardener and a dishwasher for some years, nurturing a dream to be a full-time painter.

For years he pushed a handcart, packed with paintings round all his local pubs selling what he could in almost folkloric-like tradition, becoming at times like the characters he went on to portray in later scenes.

[7] The Register of Naive Artists gave Scarborough his works their first showing, in London, but they received a scathing review in The Guardian, and he returned to Sheffield.