Everyman

These works focus on city workers: window cleaners, construction workers, gardeners. I include myself. I draw much comfort from watching city workers persisting in their labours during harsh conditions. The window cleaner, dangling precariously in the foreground (this is the view from the end of my corridor in Frobisher Crescent) is an Everyman – a metaphor for how I see myself as an artist – trying to find my footing in the art world. These works toy with the idea of how artists and architects are all engaged in a risky process – not dissimilar to window cleaners and builders drilling and digging in the snow – when creating a city. None uses a blank canvas. London’s history, like my recycled palette papers is a palimpsest of previous endeavours. The real artistic forces in the distance – classical, modern, brutal – make my job as an emerging artist even more intimidating. What I choose to create, recreate and leave blank is all important (sometimes the colour of concrete is captured in the original colour and texture of the linen canvas). These Everyman figures are not only a metaphor not merely for our hopes and ambitions but they also reveal our current anxieties and concerns. My diggers in the snow by the Silk Street entrance were erecting new City of London bollards intended as a further security measure for the Barbican Centre. What will I be painting next and why?