Butlers Wharf

The artist is working with colour relationships and variations of the grid as a geometric motif. In this painting, hard edged squares and rectangles activate the softer, more gestural painted colours and elements within the work, revealing an alternative cartography, or atmospheric landscape. The artist often connects colour with memory, and the title 'Butlers Wharf' refers to an area of London that in the 1970s was a strange and half-forgotten area of the city. Located along the River Thames and populated by enormous warehouses which dominated the narrow winding roads beneath, these monuments to a thriving mercantile past were remnants of a trading world that had once brought spices and other exotic goods into the city by river. There was still something of that history imbued within the fabric of the buildings—the smell of cinnamon, cloves and cumin, old timber, dust and the river, and a sense that these places had once been much busier, more important. 

With most of the wharf now fallen into disuse, empty riverside buildings offered artists the kind of spaces that would be almost impossible to find in London now: huge and spacious rooms, rough walls, immense windows and - most importantly - peppercorn rents. Artists could live and work there with a feeling of freedom, surrounded by remnants of a different kind of London.

Acrylic on Wooden Panel
30 x 40 cms

Unframed