Same book, different page....

'Join Hands', oil on canvas, 120 x 100cms, 2023

I’ve completed two large paintings based on similar, but not the same, observations of people, largely retired, coming together at local parks and playing fields to exercise, but, more importantly, to be with other people. They are an attempt to look at some of the ongoing interests I have in the social and political that underpin many of my paintings through a different, more positive lens.

The unpeopled landscape paintings tend towards the weary and melancholy in feel, sighing under the weight of it all. They depict post-industrial ruins, overlooked spaces on the edges and quiet suburban streets explored on night walks by the stressed insomniac. 

I sometimes think that it can be easier to make a more overt social or political statement in art that can, on the surface, appear more serious, and I think some of my landscape paintings can possess this quality. But I believe these new paintings are just as serious a message about the strength in community, grass roots activism and socialism, and above all the love and understanding we seek and need in life found in friends and the companionship of others. There were lots of groups like this set up by ordinary people post-Covid that I find inspiring. They are also signs of what we are all in our own way looking for-the opportunity to connect with others…

'The Last Days of Disco', oil on canvas, 150 x 200cms, 2023

I called the largest painting ‘The Last Days of Disco’ after a Yo La Tengo song from the album ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Out’ which, with the aged figures appearing in some sort of dance, seemed to fit as a title, but I’m wary of it seeming like a mickey-take, which it certainly isn’t. I hoped it appears a more gentle and affectionate title. Interestingly it seems to hark back to my old paintings set in nightclubs made 25 years ago. Still in the same book but on a different page, or even just a bit further down the same one. The other painting, ‘Join Hands’, with the sunlight dappled grass in the large foreground, also seemed to echo the revolving light from the mirrored disco ball.