A Perfect Day
Recently, I was commissioned me to create a painting for a landmark birthday. It was for a husband from his wife and she specified that it should contain references to the East End of London and contain his Harley. Apart from being a keen motorcyclist, I was given a couple of other details about his background, for example, a formative interest for him is the New Wave music of the late nineteen-seventies. In other words, some of his cultural cues are the same as mine. We’re the same age and we both grew up in London at the same time, albeit at different ends, but I do recall the griminess of the city in the Punk era, the ‘Winter of Discontent’, the sickly sodium streetlights and all that.
That’s the feeling I wanted to put into the painting. I researched many photographs from the area and era of London’s East End in question and used them to imagine a street-scene.
The man sent a message of thanks to me the day after he received it but to be honest, I should be thanking them. These commissions don’t come in often but when they do, it’s great when they chime so closely with my own internal artistic direction. A perfect day, indeed.