The life and times of Ron Hitchins

In 2015, Open School East, an alternative art school was temporarily residing in Hackney. As part of a documentary film project, a small documentary was made of Ron Hitchins and screened at the Hackney Community Film festival in 2015. This documentary focuses on Ron as a Flamenco dancer, however, a preliminary interview with Ron was made for preparation. The interview focused on Ron’s artwork and the relevant life experiences in his early years that led to it. Ron was a dancer and a visual artist in equal measure.

Ronald Hitchins, or Ron as he was known, was born on the 20 of April 1926, in Pennyfield, Limehouse also known as Poplar. When his birthday came around, it humoured him to be the same age as Her Majesty the Queen, however, the circumstances of his birth were the extreme opposite. Born out of wedlock, Ron’s father was a Chinese immigrant who was deported soon after Ron’s birth for dealing in opium. His mother, Annie Mary Leschinsky’s, came from a family of immigrants from Lithuania that had settled in Whitechapel.

Pennyfields
North side looking east in the 1920s

When meeting Ron’s father, his mother, Annie seemed to have been a vulnerable young woman, soon falling under the influence of opium and leaving her son to fend for himself from an early age. Ron described his early childhood with a sense of only belonging to the street and the Chinese community at large rather than a caring loving home. He spent his time roaming around with a group of young children, or ‘urchins’ as he remembered being called then.

Due to what must have been the visible neglect of Ron’s mother, Social Services workers burst into Ron’s home without warning at 3 am one night and took him away from his mother. A court case followed in which Ron’s mother willingly renounced the care of her son, with the subsequently rehousing of Ron in a foster home. This traumatic event left Ron with a deep sense of abandonment and aloneness in the world. As an adult, it made him staunchly independent of others.

School photograph Ron is 7th from left in front row (1932/33)

Ron was taken in by a family (1935), who at the time were designated as Ron’s guardians, (foster carers). From being free to roam in the familiar streets with other children from his community, Ron suddenly found himself lost in a suburban household with an English couple and their three daughters, a couple whom he was instructed to call Aunty and Uncle. However Ron always referred to his “guardians” with the same anger as if referring to prison guards, for instead of the care and love a child needs especially when taken away from his home, Ron became the recipient of relentless psychological and physical cruelty. ‘They knocked you about, and accused me of lying when I never lied,’ Ron would recall with bitterness. The daily maltreatment and persecution Ron experienced, one of which was to force and keep Ron’s head under water until he confessed to wrong he did not do, was of such severity that he ran away. Eight decades later, Ron said, ‘I slept in the open, and was found by the police’. But how long he slept ‘in the open air’ he did not say. On seeing the bruises on his body, the police took care of him and kept him at their station until another court case took place to decide on Ron’s future.

This time Ron was sent to a farm, where he felt safe and happier. When referring to this placement, Ron would refer to his carer mainly as ‘the farmer’. A family man, he liked and who treated Ron with kindness. Unfortunately, as a new boy at the local school, Ron was bullied. In one fight Ron injured another child, so seriously that he was placed in a reform school, now known as a Juvenile Correction Institute. Ron would later say, ‘Once out of reform school, I’d never allow anyone to abuse me again.’ These last three episodes in Ron’s life seem to have set him on the path he would develop. As a lone child and then later in his teens, Ron acquired a survivor’s resilience, which is to either deal or cleverly evade the behaviour of those in authority. He had also acquired a clear understanding of rules, regulations, punishment and boundaries. These codes of behaviour, woven with the resilience needed to survive them, formed patterns of emotions and repetitions of those patterns, to create themes that would later dominate Ron’s creativity both as a dancer and visual artist. This is no better illustrated than in the uniqueness of his tiles.

Untittled, panel of tiles, fiberglass &wood,

150cm x 150cm & detail 30cm x 30cm (1970’s)

Seen from a distance Ron’s tiles appear to repeat the same pattern but, on closer inspection, one realises with amazement that never fails, that each tile is unique. Hence, one could say that Ron’s imaginative vision as expressed in his artwork, is a testimony to his early life, during which a series of trials, he had a need to mine within himself all the creative thinking he could muster in order to overcome the adult world of chaos. Now he would need to discover the tools and technique with which to express his own unique creative voice so as to never return to the under-world out of which he was born. ‘By the time I left reform school, war started,’ he recalled in 2015. From this Institution, Ron was sent back to London, and place as an apprentice tool maker with an engineering firm. Similar to the placement on the farm, a 14 year old, Ron was taken under the wing of a kind ‘governor’ (his manager). ‘At first, the apprentice does odd jobs for his older workers, like fetch cups of tea, but then the governor used to show me all the ins and outs. I learned such a lot from him,’ Ron would say, ‘this made me listen to my elders.’ It meant learning how to work the various dangerous tool making machines, as well as calculating how to craft the tools from different metals and woods. These skills never left Ron as a sculptor and as a maker of many items of furniture.

‘The Circle of Life’, sculpture brass (1977).

‘Bawp’, Mixed media sculpture (1970).

As an apprentice engineer, Ron was exempt from the forces while the war was on. Speaking about his time with the engineering firm, Ron could never thank his supervisor enough for the skills he learned in crafting tools with precision. This apprenticeship not only gave Ron a sense of achievement and confidence, but he also learned to trust others within the structure of a work relationship. These attributes became a fundamental part of his character as a dancer and artist. Later Ron would reflect, when referring to his childhood experiences and in particular the cruel guardians, ‘What made my life good is when I was in care. I was ill-treated. I never used to talk about it. Now I can and say [to others] you don’t know [how it is] … Why I don’t complain about anything is because there are people worse off than me. … Now I look at it and say to myself, if they [his guardians] had not done what they have done, I would not have been able to live like I’ve done, and looked after other people when possible.’ Ron’s words are important for they are not the angry words of a victim. His words are those of a survivor as echoed in Boris Cyrulnik’s theory of resilience, which demonstrates the endless creativity within the survivor’s resilience, most of whom feels they have outwitted death. Again a vital element to Ron’s perseverance was his eagerness to learn new skills and take on challenges which he kept through his long life.

Ron dancing in the street (Malvern rd 1961).

As the war took hold the engineering firm moved out of London to Windsor and Ron volunteered for National Service. He was sent to a coal mine in Sheffield and Nottinghamshire. Ron worked in the mine for 2 years. Later reflecting upon this time, he said, ‘I learned more [about physical strength]… I liked the challenge … I got on well with the miners… It was very hard work and I did more than asked.’ However, ‘I got into trouble in the hostel where I stayed and I ended up in the army, first in Doncaster, then posted in Worcester.’ where for the next two years, because of his training in engineering, he was picked as an armourer, cleaning and mending guns.

Ron in the army front row, 3rd from the left (1942/3)

While on leave Ron would return to London and, stay with his mother who, by then had remarried to Mr Hitchens, and lived in Sandringham Road, Hackney. Ron liked his stepfather and was happy to take on his surname. In London, a girl-friend introduced Ron to the ‘Waste’, then a lively Saturday East-End market, on Kingsland Road, Hackney, where one could find in addition to fresh food, all types of materials, such as wood, paint, tools etc, which would become a rich source for the artist Ron was to become.

After two years in the army Ron moved back to Hackney and rented his own place in Downs Park Road, Hackney. During the week, Ron worked in bacon factory in Ashwin Street, Hackney, while on Saturdays he worked on the Waste market. He first job was on a fish stall, training as a fish monger. ‘Oh,’ Ron would laugh, ‘the costumers would show me how to gut and clean their fish! Here too, I learned another trade.’

Ron selling his shirt on his market stall, The Waste (1960- 1970).

In the evenings Ron would frequent coffee bars and social clubs. He became interested in fashionable clothes. This led him to design men’s shirts, which he had made and sold once he acquired a licence to set up his own market stall.

On the Waste, Ron soon acquired the nickname of ‘Flash’ and he enjoyed being a popular figure amongst the stall holders and customers alike. He met his future wife, Betty Annie Beckett, (whom he married in 1951) and with his enthusiasm for a challenge Ron began to design and make his wife’s clothes, while learning to use her treadle machine. He went on to design and make suits for his market stall and then on commission. ‘Being trained as an engineer everything I made had to be to precision,’ he recalled, and yet, ‘Everything I’ve done was a hobby. For example I laid a parquet floor in my house only for giving parties when I took up Flamenco dancing.’ His skills in manipulating different materials would later prove the versatility in his artwork.

Garden stage with dancers or dancers on parquet floor (1970’s).

Ron and Betty enjoyed a lively social life. They went to jazz clubs, one in particular called The Paramount, where most members were from the Black community, and where Ron and Betty would often be one of the few Whites present. Ron later said that as a Chinese mixed race man, ‘I never felt I suffered from racism, … [having white skin] I suppose I looked like others.’ This remark shows Ron’s perspective as the child of emigrants, who were themselves of different races and cultures. He was aware of these existing differences between himself and others, and was open to them.

Ron also liked going to The Cote d’Azur, later known as Ronny Scots, and many other Soho clubs, where the Cha-cha, the Mambo, the Jive were popular dances. ‘It was freedom when you danced,’ Ron would smile, remembering, ‘From Jive I went to see Antonio and Rosario at the Cambridge Theatre [1951]. This performance left Ron spellbound*. Determined to become a Flamenco dancer, from then on Ron took lesson and began his career as a Flamenco dancer*. ‘What attracted me to Flamenco was that the music followed the dancer. … [later]when I learned Argentinian dancing, someone would comment on my timing. I can put steps into Argentinian Tango. This is what I had: perfect timing.’

Picture of Ron as a Flamenco dancer at the Troubadour (1970’s).

While meeting musicians and dancers in clubs such, as the 100 Club, Ron also met many fo the artists from Hampstead, where at the time, similarly to Hackney in the 80s, a community of artists thrived. On seeing the way musicians and artists lived, Ron describes their influence on him, ‘I used to look out the window see men {who worked all week] wash, polish their car at weekends, run it around the block and park it again. I learned from watching this [suburban] scenario that I would work at weekends and have the whole week off!’

Ron ensured his shirts design kept up with ‘the edge of fashion’, which he now made himself during the week, and regarded this enterprise as fun rather than a chore. ‘Everything I’ve done I did not do for the money. I just wanted to be the only one with [a vanguard] style… but I was working hard during my “week off” … As artists we are lucky doing the things we like.’ This attitude stayed with Ron, and everything he went on doing he enjoyed. This meant he would do more and more, with his productivity becoming vast.

Meanwhile Ron and Betty had a son, Mark. They stayed married for the following five years. When they eventually divorced Betty took care of Mark and later remarried. Yet over the years Ron remained friends with Betty and always spoke well of her.

In 1955 Ron saved enough money for a deposit to buy a house and with generous help from the Borough of Hackney, acquired a mortgage to buy a house in Malvern Road, Hackney. Having only a small mortgage enabled Ron to make two studios in his house, one for Flamenco dancing and teaching, the other for his artwork. He also built a stage in his garden for Flamenco dancing. Ron spent the rest of his life in Malvern road.

‘I was always up for a challenge,’ he recollected, ‘I went for a competition, a world marathon Jive and won in 24 hours and 05 minutes non stop, [1957, a new World Jiving Record] and I went to a party afterwards. Throughout I had different partners and a bucket behind the bar [to urinate in].’* One can see what Ron refers to as freedom when dancing when watching the link bellow: Jive at the Cote d’Azur London 1960.

Picture of Ron dancing the Jive marathon (1957)

Aspiring to be a professional Flamenco dancer, Ron took Flamenco classes at the Troubadour in Old Brompton Street, Soho. After class he would go onto coffee houses where he met ’all sorts of different types of people. You’d meet actors like Oliver Reed, or

Lord so and so’s son. They’d have seen you dance and ask if you could dance for them.’

Ron was invited to dance at their parties. ‘They’d have clubs in Hammersmith, Kensington. When you got there there’re be musicians, someone singing opera… I was lucky because of my rhythm in Jazz I could dance even to classical music. In them days I was not very good, because everything I did was for fun.’ Ron’s first professional booking as a Flamenco dancer came in a Spanish restaurant. While becoming a professional Flamenco dancer, Ron continued to design shirts and had them made, selling them on his market stall at the weekends.

Around this time, the mid 60’s, Ron became familiar with people of different milieu. His life took another turning, when he met the Canadian sculptor Maryon Kantaroff, who asked him to sit for her. ‘After I sat for her, I used the clay in her studio and I began to make pendants. They were like Mexican style. The idea was to make a mould and produce them in quantity. But I enjoyed it so much that I began to make individual ones.’ These were biscuit fired in Maryon’s studio. ‘I never glazed them. I used Indian ink and wax polish to give them a look of old leather Chesterfield [sofa]. This is how I made my tiles for the beds, the frames, and all others.’ Maryon made a bronze head of Ron which he watched being made, thus deepening his knowledge of casting technique. ‘I began setting myself up at home for making tiles for [decorating] my house. I took the tiles I made at home to the studio in Fulham to be fired.’

Ron was now meeting sculptors, painters and ceramists, and his horizon widened, inspiring him to make larger works. One of his friends, a painter, would travel once a week to a further education college, and introduced Ron to a day art course at Isleworth Polytechnique, now Thames College. Journeying with his friend, Ron attended a sculpture course one day a week, where he learned welding. Having been an apprentice engineer, he was familiar with all the machinery used for crafting metals, glass and woods. ‘My feature [in welding] was brazing*, where you had brass and I used to colour it the navy blue (ink). If you put oil on water it makes a marble surface. I used a similar technique as a feature on my sculptures by spraying a navy blue colour and heating the metal until I got a textured surface with a marble effect.’ With his engineering knowledge Ron was able to experiment, creating a patterned metal, as if he was working with patterned textiles.

‘Flower’ brass s& geode sculpture (1977)

‘Crystal heart’ brass & geode detail(1978)

Ron later attended an evening course in casting at the Sir John Cass College of Art, where he deepened his knowledge of mould making. One can see Ron’s experience as a dancer reflected in his metal sculptures as well as his tiles, for the theme of movement, repetitive pattern, and rhythm becomes the structures of both his three dimensional works, his relief works, wood assemblage boxes, and his tiles. Ron also used geodes, he called ‘flowers’, in his metal sculpture, placing them centre piece, thus adding a natural sparkling light as if hearing a flamenco’s singer’s voice, as well as a reminder of the ultimates source of matter. Later Ron was to explore fiberglass & resin casting with which his produced his largest works.*

Untitled, tile, fired clay, metallic paint 30cm x30cm (1970’s’)

Untitled, fired clay, H 34cm, W24 cm (1965)

To achieve a metallic appearance Ron mixed bronze or copper powder with the resin. When reflecting on his art work Ron would say, ‘I love still life but I can’t do things like that.’ Ron remained an abstract artist. He admired of Picasso, Barbara Hepworth, Max Ernst, and kept a large encyclopaedia of naive art. One can see their influence in his sculptural forms, relief shapes as well as in his occasional surrealist collages.

By 1964-65, at the age of forty, and with the support of a couple of artists, Ron was given his first one man exhibition at the Whibley Gallery .

Article 1964

Ron’s work sold well and was reviewed in art magazines of the time. After a couple of shows Ron was asked to sign with a gallerist who offered to represent him. Ron refused, fearing the lost of control in his work and stood to lose the freedom to work at his own pace, experimenting as he wished. He felt that he would be under pressure to produce work for the gallery and their buyers, and this in turn would become ‘work’, not real art as he experienced it. However, the successful shows gave him recognition as a professional artist. ‘I sold enough to buy my materials and make more,’ he would laugh.

Nonetheless, when dealing with art galleries Ron perceived the experience as a form of hostility for being working class as these galleries were the province of the middle class. For example Ron designed a coffee table which incorporated a surface decorated with his tiles, in a maple wood surround with two superimposed glass surfaces standing on four gold spheres for legs. The work was rejected for not fitting into any ‘genre’, and, when he later came to collect it, on submitting one of these works to the British Craft Council, the receptionist informed him that an American couple had been keen to buy it. This angered Ron resulting in that from then on he preferred to showed in a variety of alternative galleries, sometimes curated by artists, or spaces in public buildings.

‘The backgammon table’ multi media (1976).

Ron was able to support himself financially by performing in clubs and private parties as a professional Flamenco dancer, all the while teaching Flamenco, and by selling his work. One lucrative source of income was when he began to use his tiles as decorative frames for mirrors. Freed from his market stall and the pressure of the ‘art world’ Ron now made works on commission. He was able to gather all his material locally as, up until the late 90’s, many small workshops thrived in Hackney, in particular Kingsland road, Hackney Road and under the railway arches along London Fields and Cambridge Road. An artist or school teacher would be welcome to take ‘left overs’ of textiles, wood, metal or glass. With the versatile art supplier and framers Simons on Hackney Road, Ron enjoyed experimenting with new materials as these became readily available and, like many artists, began using car spray on his tiles for a variety of effects.

Untitled, wood assemblage (1990’s)

‘Barbara’ fiberglass (H.246 cm,W.187cm,D.83cm,

at the Rosemary Lipman building

The link between his two disciplines, Flamenco and Sculpture, came clear when Ron began to produce assemblage boxes in the 90’s. These are small constructions of wood offcuts he brought back from cabinet making workshops. He assembled them to various dancing steps of Flamenco. Out of this context they recall the work of Brâncuși, an artist Ron also admired.

An array of new materials came into our everyday life from Biros to felt-tips, from canvas to plastic surfaces like CDs, or from silkscreen printing to digital printing. Ron became interested in these new techniques and materials.

Cabinet Drawer, 38cm x 34cm (1990’s)

Untitled, perspex, 47cm x 16cm (1970’s).

Untitled, detail of panel of ink drawing on CD, (2005)

From 2005, he began to draw at first intricate patterns, then more figurative images of a fantasy world, which he filled with bright colours. He digitally photographed these and had them enlarged and printed on large canvas. He never knew ahead of time what he would draw until the ink, or acrylic paint, touched the paper. Since he used ink and could not erase his mark, once he began a shape it became a challenge how to end it with ‘making a mistake’. Just like in his childhood, Ron drew as if needing to get himself out of a tight corner. He would transform whatever mark he had first made into a figure, a symbol or pattern, all of which became integrated with one another, with balance and harmony, as if the final image represented a mathematical equation that was resolved.

‘Lemmings’Ink drawing, 29 x 42 cm (2010)

‘Jamie Cullum Y Group’, ink drawing printed on large canvas (2014).

Here again the themes of movement and rhythm structured the image, Ron drew as if dancing with the characters he created to the ‘singing’ of colours. Sometimes Ron would put aside a drawing which he could not complete for days, maybe weeks. While thinking about his drawing, he would begin another one, or several others, until he was ready to resolve it. ‘I wanted to make my drawing so complicated that you had to look into it,’ he reflected, then waving at a table with little colourful wooden figures, he smiled, ‘I bought little manikins and drew on them to give to the kids.’

Untitled, painted wood manikin, 34cm tall (2012)

Ron became fascinated by the flow and complete engagement in drawing. On one hand it meant utter freedom when facing the empty page, but on the other hand once the first mark was made there was no possibility of an ‘accident’. Yet the entire content of the image was itself an ‘accident’ since he had to fit in with his original gesture, the first shape and colour, and had to build on it until completed. He drew as he lived: fighting to keep ultimate control. The fantasy world he expressed is free of dark forces, it is one of joie de vivre, of irony, humorous metamorphoses, of freedom where all forms are equals, of superimposed realities, and of an endless imagination.

Ron was still drawing a couple of weeks before he was taken to the Homerton Hospital, where within two days he passed away. Only 12 hour before his last breath he commented, tearful, in full admiration of the staff’s devotion to his care, and bequeathing the ward one of his large paintings.

Ron died on the morning of the 13th of December 2019.

For further information see Mike Jingle: flamenco.jingle@hotmail.com

• 1951/52, at age 25/26, RH became interested in flamenco after meeting Antonio and Rosario at a performance at The Cambridge Theatre. “It just took me over when I realised what a man could do. It was like someone seeing an Errol Flynn film and wanting to sword fight like him. Then I looked through a dance magazine and saw an ad for Spanish dance tuition. The first time I went I just sat and watched, and I didn’t like it at all really because there wasn’t any stamping. I thought Spanish dancing was all about stamping. But the teacher taught classical dance and most of it was just arm exercises, working up later in the lesson to just two stamps. Two stamps!” (Source, 29/4/76 Shepherds Bush Gazette and 28/3/80 The News Magazine).

• See: Hackney Community Film festival (2015).

• 1957 Broke and set a new world record for non-stop dancing by jiving for 24 hours and five minutes with 24 girls and sustained by milk and orange juice in a Soho club. (Source unknown).

• See for Jive evenings this link, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/jiving-at-the-cotedazur-club/query/JIVING+AT

• 1961/62, at age 35/36, RH lands his first job dancing flamenco. This was at the Casa Pepe off the Fulham Road where he gained the monica Manolo from the owner. (Source 28/3/80 The News Magazine).

• See the sculpture install at the Rose Lipman Building, doors and large tiles used for mural.

• Soldering with an alloy of copper and zinc at high temperature.