Men At Work - Oil Pastel on Frosted Glass Panel - 21

Men At Work - Oil Pastel on Frosted Glass Panel - 21" X 21" - sealed with acrylic spray varnish

Part of the Day Collage collection where I paint things I've seen throughout a single day, or a series of days, and place them all together in a single space.

Patterns from tiles, walls, murals, paving slabs or advertising - religious icongoraphy from buildings, pamphlets or books - people - graffiti and street art - discarded objects - road signs or building signs - logos - faces - shapes - cultural symbols - food - nature - transport..... all things that capture my attention, particularly as a neurodivergent person with a hightened sensitivity to my surroundings.

This day was actually a Jewish festival called Purim - but I didn't know this until I left the house. I live in a very multicultural area of North London - and one of the cultures here is orthodox jewish. So when I was walking around on this day I saw lots of toys and glitter, childrens' drawing in windows like a clown that had been drawn in pencil with the words 'happy purim' on it and stuck in a shop window, deflated ballooons and toy police badges that had been dropped or discarded, forgotten and left behind during games.

I thought this contrasted interestingly with things like the can of k cider that had been left on a wall, a sure sign that a drunk or potentially homeless person had rested there a while. We have a lot of drugs and homelessness in this area, and it starkly contrasted the young jewish children playing games and skipping in the street in their best outfits.

On top of this were road signs and building signs - that seem innocent enough but actually heral the beginning of the end for a lot of local cultures and communities as the new builds go up and the area gets ready to change completely. How much longer will the drunks and crack heads convene on the street corners here, and how much longer with there be young orthodox jewish children playing innocently in the streets?

Other sights I saw this day were graffiti tags by NIGEL and SOAP, traditional red phone boxes no longer in use, and street art around the warehouses. Again, three different worlds co existing in one space - all of which may soon be wiped out to make way for the one new world of clean grey sterile slabs.

I show the world through my perspective - one of an observer and a perticipant - taking in all of the disconnected and seemingly unrelated things, places, people - that I see around me - and placing them together - overlapping, jostling for space - oblivious to one another's significance or even existence and yet strikingly apparent to my eyes.

These works often turn out to seem in some way unintentionally poloitcal or politically motivated - and I think, that's because that's kind of what politics is - a lot of different, contrasting, unrelated, disconnected cultures and idealolgies and subcultures and people and places and histories and objects - all competing for space or striving to share space or take up space or take away space.

I drift through and take note, without bias or commentary. I draw what I see...and there is something cathartic in putting it all down; getting it all out.