New paintings in progress for 2025 include scenes of the March for Gaza peace marches that Ed has been sketching, Soho at night, Paddington Train station and the City of London.
In 2024-25 I began to sketch the crowds in Whitehall that were attending the freedom marches for Palestine. Protest, uprising and resistance to political corruption have featured in two of my previous paintings, St Nazarius’s Day Mexico City and Sukhumvit Market Bangkok, as well as my London paintings Nothing To See Here about the first Iraq war, and Ode to Joy Westminster, about the Brexit protests, for and against, the use of demonising fascist rhetoric by right wing politicians, the subsequent resurgance of the far right and the murder of Jo Cox.
My 2019 painting Torsion, St Thomas’s Hospital, was made in response to the financial pressures on the NHS in the years before the pandemic, and the Junior Doctors’ strikes of 2016-18.
I don’t know where this new Palestinian protest painting will lead, but it’s a continuation of my interest in acts of resistance and the human struggle to overcome oppression.
