| Description | 35 sketchbooks and notebooks reflecting Tom Cross' life as a painter. They reflect his artistic career, from student at Manchester College of Art and then the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1950s to his trips abroad through various scholarships and teaching opportunities, including his time at the British School at Rome, and planning for his own exhibitions. Those specific to places he visited, such as France, Italy and Wales, contain photographs, postcards, souvenirs, sketches and text documenting his time. Others contain sketches, paintings, preparatory work for exhibitions, including 'Light Works' and works of art, handwritten notes, postcards, diagrams, plans, biographical text. |
| Admin History | Tom Cross spent a year at the British School at Rome, 1956-7, after winning the Abbey Minor Scholarship. He was then awarded a French Government Scholarship and worked for a year in Paris and in the south of France 1957-58.
Tom Cross' Light Works exhibition was first held in Ohio while working as a visiting lecturer at the Ohio State University. It was later brought to the UK and exhibited in Reading, Durham, Cardiff and Aberystwyth, 1972-3. At this time Cross' work focused on abstract and structure, and this exhibition demonstrated his exploration of three-dimenasional objects and their translation onto paper. |