Exhibition Paintings, Painting News
Into the West
Jun
Many a long hour has been spent waiting on this station platform, watching trains come and go, and letting memory drift between here and there. For years, I carried the hope of bringing my three daughters to London—to show them the streets, parks, and corners of the city where I grew up, the place that shaped so much of who I became. Life, however, has a way of rearranging our plans.
So this painting became a kind of journey instead. Here they are, my three girls, making their way back to Osterley after a day spent “up in the smoke,” carrying with them something of the London I had always wished to share. It is a painting about travel, memory, family, and the quiet ache of things imagined but never quite realised.
Painted in oils, this large figurative work is also a record of its own making. At almost the maximum scale my low-ceilinged studio will allow, the canvas became a challenge in itself. As I worked, I had to continually shift it from side to side, negotiating space as carefully as I negotiated light, atmosphere, and composition. In that sense, the painting is as much about persistence and longing as it is about the scene it depicts.
A contemporary oil painting of a London station platform, it reflects my enduring fascination with everyday moments that carry the weight of memory and the passage of time.
Oils on stretched canvas. 6′ x 2.5′
