The Specials' bassist pledges further support

Horace Panter pledges to support the charity further through his own art projects.

As the bassist with The Specials Horace is familiar with the charity and the work that we do. We have been lucky enough to have the ongoing support of this world renowned 2 Tone ska band – whether it’s playing for Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall, collecting guestlist donations across numerous tours or accepting the Teenage Cancer Trust Outstanding Contribution to Music Award at the NME Awards their support has been unfaltering.

Horace has taken his support to the next level and has pledged to support the charity further through his own art projects. Horace graduated in 1975 with a degree in Fine Art from Coventry's Lanchester Polytechnic. Although most of his career has been defined by his involvement in music, art has always been in the frame! His visits to galleries, the art books and hundreds of photographs, have all inspired his current work and influenced its development over many years. With iconography as a unifying theme, all his paintings pay homage to traditional forms of 'iconographic writing' but with a contemporary twist. For more information about Horace Panter Art please visit www.horacepanterart.com and take a look at what we think is quite frankly fabulous! His work is being sold at St. Paul's Gallery in Birmingham www.stpaulsgallery.com, the world's largest specialist in music-related art and an exhibition showcasing his Blues prints together with a number of original paintings ‘Painting the Blues and Beyond’ will take place from 27th April - 11th May. The paintings in this exhibition have been carefully chosen from his collection to fit in with the musical theme of the gallery.

This exhibition will be the first of Horace’s in which a percentage of all sales will be donated to the charity.

Horace says “I love The Blues, especially Chicago Blues; music originally made by (as often as not) semi-literate black people who had migrated North to escape the sharecropping poverty of the Mississippi cotton plantations to find work in the grinding manual labour of Chicago’s factories and who, at the same time, were humiliated by the strictures racial segregation. Music of loss, lust and longing, it is the most emotional and exciting music I have ever heard. The thrill of first hearing a slide guitar made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and still does”

This promises to be a unique exhibition featuring both Horace’s Blues Paintings and his icon-inspired Robots so we highly recommend a trip to the gallery to see the show and also to have a browse around the massive collection of album- and music-inspired art.

Thanks Horace!

Click here to buy music from The Specials.