After a pause from this blog I can now reveal to you, dear readers, that for the last few weeks I’ve been working non-stop on a series of paintings of Salford for an interior design company- an excellent commission, and- frighteningly, my first of this magnitude.
They’re to be reproduced , much bigger, for an outlet of (so my pizza-literate friends tell me!) the most up-market of pizza restaurant chains.
And with a short deadline, small wonder that I’ve been akin to a headless chicken!
For starters, photos had to be taken of the area, both of the spanking-new, trendy Salford quays with its bridge and Lowry Museum , and the old Salford… factories, mills, streets of red brick.
Out of hundreds of photos I found the best sixty, eventually whittling it down to a dozen or so, choosing a good variety of subject matter. Colour, too had to be considered – I didn’t want to use the same palette on each.
I worked in a mixture of media which gave me the grand sweeps of colour and the delicate architectural detail I wanted to convey.
I was pleased with the results- I’d have liked a little longer to do the ‘ pizzapics’, but I stuck with what I knew would work well and I feel I’ve captured some of the atmosphere of a city under metamorphosis.
It’s been important to me also that I record the changing scene before the charwoman that is regeneration arrives, takes up her Mr. Muscle, and cleans away the grime- and some of the character- of centuries.
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