I have been developing a stream of paintings based on my immediate surroundings in Loughborough Junction, London, since 2018. They are urban landscapes showing the interplay between the hard lines of architecture and the momentary light, shades and colours happening in a given moment. The paintings work like long exposure photographs, intensifying colours and light, allowing both artist and observer to experience order within the urban chaos.
A collector once remarked that "the absence of figures evokes complex feelings - as if we are aware of something that has just happened, or is just about to happen". This comment was made in 2019, before any of us could imagine the world would change so dramatically due to Covid 19. My paintings, which concentrate on the permanence of the built environment as opposed to the people and cars that interact with it on a daily basis, obviously take on a different meaning today. We have now all experienced these empty streetscapes, their eery quality, their silent beauty, their stillness of being.
However, my paintings are not a reflection on the isolation caused by the lockdown. They merely celebrate what is there, at all times, and which we do not always see in our daily activities: the interplay of light and shadows with the architecture, the perspectives of roads, the promise of what is coming next.
