High Art

HIGH ART

AMONG THOSE WHO ARE passionate about classic cars and know their art, the name of English illustrator Bob Freeman, who died in 2004, is known and respected; what is less well known, outside of his own circle, is that Bob was a passionate motorcyclist.

Newly launched, a cotj tection of Freeman's finest [,~ work-now available as prints for the first timereflects his love of bikes, as well as his better known and characteristically idiosyncrat ic but beautiful depictions of the automo bile as high art.

Though he eventual ly settled and worked in London, Bob was born and raised in the northeast of England and retained the grit of that working-class region. Rebellious at school, he found little to excite him in Middles borough other than cars and bikes. Building "specials," usually around a BSA Gold Star motor, was an avocation that never left him:

A colleague at the rent-acar business where he worked recognized in his obsessive scribbling an embryonic tal ent and persuaded him to enroll at the local art school. This he did; thence to college in London where the theme of

"Art and the Machine" took hold of him, never to leave. Aeroplanes, early ones partic ularly; cars (pre-war Alfas were a favorite, aesthetically approaching perfection); and, always, bikes. His trademark black sketchbooks, a trea sure trove of unpublished material, are filled with them-among mad poetry, pin-up girls, recipes and

cartoons. Often we see caféracers, or the 1920's equiva lent. Stripped-down, skinny things, elegant and provoca tive and uncompromising, like him. The only car we ever knew of him owning had been a tatty, but tuned, Triumph TR6, but most of the time his day-to-day transport was an old, unreliable, kick-starter less motorcycle. In central London. Oh, and without lights. Uncompromising.

Around the London area-or the Isle of Man in SeptemberBob was a familiar sight.

Small, black-leathered, arriving on his NortonGold Star café-racer or maybe his 1930s Velocette, he would remove his vintage helmet, don an equally vintage tweed cap and squat in front of something that caught his eye and sketch. Quickly, deftly. The sketches would later be worked up through several stages to full-size artworks, sometimes washed with watercolor, often with astute or ironic notes scribbled around the edges. He loved the cars he drew, and the engines and the aircraft, but motorbikes were inside him. Being a motorcyclist defined him. His sort of motorcycles, his way.

Freeman’s work is instantly recognizable. He often talked about producing a range of prints, but it never quite happened. And then, it all having become too much, he tragically took his own life. He left a few bikes, and a house cluttered with bits-carbs and magnetos, cylinder heads and wheels; another project, another life. And his pictures, which through a small group of his motorcycling friends have formed the basis for this collection of prints (www.bobfreeman.co.uk). His bikes-the Goldie and the Velolive on as his headstone and his art lives on as his testament, for these are the things he loved.

Justin Wand