THE
SLEEPING
CITY
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
THERE WAS ONCE A TIME
WHEN THE GIANT SLEPT
although we have so quickly forgotten. In a matter of days, the euphoric city became a wasteland. The only people left were frontline workers, people in body bags stacked into refrigerated trucks and those with no other choice, like me, my home a million miles away. Covid-19 brought the entire world to a halt.
Art became my escape.
I was physically trapped but my mind was somewhere and nowhere. For weeks I sat with my face inches from the paper and drew an infinity of circles. Circles became lines, which became more lines, which became a self-portrait, which became a giant nude, which became dreaming of swimming in the ocean, which became drawing my refuge – my New York City rooftop. Slowly my focus shifted from inwards to outwards. Before my eyes was a sleeping city, an empty playground, a moment in time beckoning to be captured. It felt as if I were the only person left in a city that was meant for millions. The machine had been shut down.
AFTER AN ETERNITY
OF SILENCE
without warning the streets burst at the seams with Black Lives Matter and equal rights protesters. Tens of thousands of people gathered. The protests were peaceful and powerful. Following the protests were riots. Glass scattered across the street. Police cars set on fire. High-end shop windows smashed. In reaction they built a fortress. The city snapped back into silence. Empty shops boarded up. Doors bolted. Chains linked. Stripped back, the shop fronts became a canvas and the streetscape a gallery. The boards intended as a barricade became a surface for art, expression, and graffiti with a powerful message. I was there. I watched it all from my sixth-floor apartment in SoHo. Some people wrote about. Some people created music. I painted it. It was my coping mechanism. My way of processing my world.
NEW YORKERS WERE EAGER
TO SEE THEIR CITY COME BACK TO LIFE
I remember the day the restaurant downstairs reopened. They played extremely loud Old Italian music to the street as if to announce, ‘We are open, we survived!’ One day I was clambering through the restaurant seating at my front door with the washing I’d just collected from the laundromat down the road and I noticed a very suave black man with a white hat eating his lunch. I was so taken by his aura that I found myself climbing out my sixth-floor window onto the fire escape to look at him again. It was here I discovered the voyeuristic vantage point. With this zoomed out perspective I could see the broader canvas; the city was waking. People were together once again.
ON THE WALL
IN THE FRAME
ink.
IN THE DETAILS
This is an abstract ink on paper collection which sets it apart from the other series. These artworks examine movement through hyper-attention to detail. The drawings encourage the viewer to stand back and see the image in its entirety and then walk right up, inches from the paper, and examine the tiny details that make up the whole. What do you see? The surface of water? An undulating landscape? An army of ants? A fork in the road?
This series was created during the Covid lockdown. A time when the world was still but our minds were active.
watercolour.
THE STREETSCAPE
New York City is a vast and layered urban ecosystem. Every paint colour, every brick, every poster, every work of graffiti, every intricately detailed Corinthian column were an intentional choice made by countless different people over a vast time scape. All these choices are woven into the fabric of the changing streetscape we experience today. ‘New York 01 Collection’ invites you to stop and enjoy these nuances.
STREET DINING
These unique watercolour paintings are designed to be hung as a series in any combination. During Covid and lock-down New Yorkers were driven out of sheer necessity to re-image the streetscape. This manifested itself in restaurants erecting temporary, and some not-so temporary, outdoor dining structures on the streets. This presented a unique opportunity to observe diners from the sixth-floor apartment fire escape in Soho. This voyeuristic vantage point provides an intimate insight into the diner’s body language and interactions.
ephemera.
EPHEMERA IS A CELEBRATION
The ‘Ephemera Collection’ challenges the viewer’s conditioned observations of light, shadow and negative spaces that interact with everyday objects. Each pastel pencil drawing captures a transient moment. In seconds, as the light continues it’s journey, curious shapes and patterns dissolve and emerge. The art works are designed to hang in any combination. Which are your favourites?
IN THE
DETAILS
DIGITAL EXHIBITION
now showing
Check it out!
