'Streetscapes'

It’s usual to think of Landscape paintings in terms of the natural environment and more specifically about its permanence, only subjected to slow incremental change over time. The painter renders this experience into a 2D image by pushing graphite or pigment around on a surface that, when combined with both physical and intellectual input, the objects characteristics switch from a perceived reality to the representational. It is representative of, but not, the landscape. I have always thought that this process is equally applicable to an urban or built environment. These ‘Streetscapes’ are simply that.

I remember walking around a market in Delhi faced with a sea of clank and clatter and I started to figure out how that experience might play out within a painting.

If you think of any landscape (painting or actual), its usual to imagine a ‘prospect’ viewpoint; a location from which you look out across, or towards something. Initially at least, the larger canvasses upon which I was working at the time suited that brief quite well. Thinking back to that Delhi street market, I’d suggest it’s less usual to perceive landscape as something wrapped around you, and that you can touch. Eventually this brought forward a shift towards a tactile paper surface and a smaller scale and all the tools were in place…..