As the first transgender sitcom – set in Newcastle – comes to television, Ruth Addicott talks to transgender artist Lizzie Rowe about how attitudes in the North-East have changed

When transgender artist Lizzie Rowe left her house in Newcastle in a long skirt and make up in the 1990s, she had to brace herself for all kinds of abuse. She got used to the spitting, staring and shouting, she even got used to having cigarettes stubbed out in her drink. But then it got really nasty, she had fractures, stitches and, on one occasion, she had to have six staples in the back of her head after being attacked with a bottle.

It’s a different world now though. Since Lizzie first painted her way through a transgender transformation, depicting her personal struggle on canvass, attitudes have changed completely.

A respected artist, her work has been collected worldwide. But more importantly for Lizzie, she can walk down a street in Newcastle and no one bats an eyelid. The last time she got stopped by a stranger was when an elderly woman went up to her in Marks & Spencer to tell her how much she loved her paintings.

With the launch of new BBC TV series, Boy Meets Girl, set in Newcastle – the first British sitcom to feature a transgender actor in the lead role – former Olympic gold medallist Bruce Jenner becoming ‘Caitlyn’, and forthcoming film The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe –one of the first recipients of gender reassignment surgery – transgender issues are back in the news. And no one knows better than Lizzie, who turned 60 this year, what it’s like to go through a transition in a tough Northern town.

Exploring gender and identity has been an integral part of Lizzie’s art since the early Eighties. She painted herself in a wedding dress when she was a heterosexual ‘married’ man and had exhibitions themed around transvestism which had rave reviews. “A lot of people didn’t know what a transvestite was back then,” she says. “I once got asked, ‘Is it someone who wears other people’s vests?’”

“I never painted myself in any pretty shapes, I painted myself with the face I’ve got, warts and all. It was a way of externalising who I was and saying to the public, look, there are transvestites out there and we haven’t come down from Mars.”

Lizzie was born ‘Stephen’ in 1955 and grew up in Portsmouth before moving to Wolverhampton at the age of 12. Her father was an artist and head of fine art at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, her mother an English teacher, and Lizzie remembers doing her first oil painting when she was seven of a tree cut in half showing the sap rising up the trunk and into the branches.

As a teenage boy, Stephen didn’t think about gender, but loved dressing up and as soon as the house was empty he’d sneak into his sister’s wardrobe and dress up in her nighties. “It was a typical hidden transvestite life I suppose,” says Lizzie.

Stephen had various girlfriends, then met Cheryl at university with whom he went on to have a ten-year relationship and a daughter. He was open about his transvestism and in 1981, they moved to the North-East, where he lectured at Northumbria University and became artist-in-residence at Tyne Tees TV. In 1988, he got a four-month stipendiary to go to Berlin. It was the year Berlin was the European Capital of Culture and a hotbed of creativity with artists, poets, musicians and hippies pouring in from all over.

“I took two suitcases,” recalls Lizzie. “One full of jeans and trainers and one full of skirts and dresses and I’d dress as a man or woman depending how I felt on the morning. People used to have a bet on how I’d turn up, but first and foremost I was respected for being an artist and that really made me think - it doesn’t matter what clothes you wear or who you are, it’s what you do with your life.”

“I fell in love with Berlin and the whole alternative lifestyle and eventually the penny dropped and I thought, I’m not a heterosexual transvestite, I’m transgender.”

He was dreading going back to Newcastle which was years behind Berlin in terms of attitude and culture – as were most places, but with Cheryl’s support – they parted amicably – he came back and began the long difficult transition. Finally, in 1995, he underwent gender re-assignment surgery at Charing Cross Hospital in London and walked out as Lizzie.

“Things have changed a hell of a lot since I first became Lizzie,” she says. “It was not a nice life for many years, but I got on with it, things moved on. It’s nothing like that now. I go down Grainger Market at least once a week to do my shopping, I know my butcher and quite a few of the stall holders by name and they know me. It’s ‘what can I get for you today, Lizzie?’ and nobody bats an eyelid. It’s not like I want to be a drag queen on a Gay Pride march. I’m not trying to be something other than myself. I’m just Lizzie and I’ve always said a smile costs nothing.”

As well as solo exhibitions and numerous shows – including one in which she appeared alongside Grayson Perry and David Hockney – Lizzie has done many portrait commissions, both private and public, which hang in theatres, board rooms and universities nationwide. She recently painted the retired vice chancellor of Newcastle University. Her paintings adorned the grand staircases of the Theatre Royal in Newcastle for years and are on permanent display at the Biscuit Factory and the Laing Art Gallery. The latter features ‘Dysphoria’, an 8ft by 8ft painting, the largest she has ever done. Her work has been likened to Rembrandt and Gustav Courbet; Lizzie cites artists such as Velasquez, Goya and Manet as influences.

Some of her best work explores gender roles and femininity, showing her fascination with lace, dresses and domestic routines, such as the ironing board and basket of crumpled washing in a painting called ‘Never Done’.

Lizzie’s latest work, which featured recently at the Biscuit Factory, has focused on still life, inspired by her studio - paint brushes, pomegranates, a brass ash tray full of ‘dog ends’, a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and some dried-up sunflowers. “Van Gogh painted live sunflowers, I paint the dried up husks of them,” she chuckles.

As far as clothes go, Lizzie has always worn long skirts and dressed like a hippy.

“I’ve never bothered with fashion,” she says. “I know what I like and what suits me. I’ve never been the kind of polish-my-nails type. I do too much gardening and manual stuff for that. I put make-up on, but I don’t do stilettos. I’m Lizzie - people know me as that and I think that’s where I get my respect.”