Dimensions: 107×102 cms
Media: Acrylic paint charcoal and chalk on canvas
Year: 2004
Sold: Yes
Private Collection
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March 2003, I was splitting time between teaching art to my students in Peckham and painting for myself in a small studio in the old WH Cornelius toy factory on the Old Kent Road that I shared with some very greedy mice.
Columbia Road had always held a fascination for me, so I decided it was time to paint the first of the two paintings I made about the flower market.
Drawing trips meant keeping a low profile, being respectful of the traders, not getting in the way. This sensitivity is something that I’ve continued to be aware of ever since when I’m drawing in the city. I rarely take photos, just of details, mostly I’m watching, reading faces.
The sketches are incidental to my working process. They serve to make me look, record, and feel the rhythms of the street. In these early days I was still nervous of standing my ground in the street. It felt intrusive. My sketches reflected that fear, they were self conscious. As a result, when I looked back at my catch in the studio, I couldn’t remember the faces and figures I’d sketched.
When I had my first studio on the old Kent Road in 1995 I’d walk up the long street with my sketchbook and pens and try to find somewhere to stand and sketch the people I wanted to paint.
I’d always used pens to draw, ever since I was a child. It wasn’t until I taught my students to draw that I fell in love with pencil drawing. By 2003 I was more confident at street drawing. I knew I had to look, sometimes to make eye contact. I acknowledged that there was no other way to make the work I wanted to make.
I’m attracted to energy in the street, my eyes are drawn to movement and volume, and then I look for the pockets of silence, the slower, more invisible characters. The distance between people, the spaces between them, is where the story lies.
That’s what I take back to the studio, and a story emerges- the story of what drew me to the place I wanted to paint. And suddenly,it’s there on the canvas.
