SERIES STUDIO-ESTUDIO

The painter´s relationship with the studio has been the subject of many masterpieces. Acting as a 'portrait' of their world, the studio has served as a metaphor or allegory at the very heart of artistic intention and intimacy. 

'Carpenters Road' 

oil on canvas | 125 x 156 cm | 2025

'Carpenters Road with Red'

oil on canvas | 230 x 342 cm | 2023

'Drawing No.19'

pastel on paper | 50 x 70 cm | 2021

All three of my former studios shown in this exhibition (Old Ford Road, Carpenter´s Road and Barrachina) have for one reason or another been pulled down. Although they no longer physically exist, they live on in my mind and in my memories of them. It feels as though by painting them, I can retrieve the irretrievable. I pay homage to them through my art and it feels as if the hours spent between those walls can somehow be regained. It's a nostalgic enterprise where the introspective subject acts as a symbol for all artistic endeavour. 

'Barrachina No.7'

oil on canvas | 75 x 84 cm | 2021

'Drawing No.7'

pastel on paper | 50 x 70 cm | 2020

Each of these studios have generated a geology. Strata of paint building up on floors, walls and furnishing, worn out brushes that never get thrown away, the nails in the walls just where you need them, all witnesses to the hours spent working. Much of the paraphernalia I have carried along with me, even from London to Madrid, from place to place. Chairs, plan chests, buckets, ladders, it's hard to throw away these old friends. It's almost as though these studios are all the same studio. 

'Old Ford Road No.6'

oil on canvas | 64 x 95 cm | 2020

BARRACHINA

I moved to Madrid in 1995 and was offered a free studio space – Barrachina - by my girlfriend's father. The site was temporary as it was destined to be developed as flats, but the three years I spent there were enough time to get off the ground in a new country. It was very cold, very hot, and very big, but despite it being the toughest environment in which I have ever worked, I was able to produce a series of intense works there.  

'Studio (green and blue)' 

oil on canvas | 150 x 155 cm | 2025

For centuries artists have shared a common consideration: the necessity for a sanctuary in which their creativity can find expression. The genius and the not so genius, all artists need a space, a studio. That somewhere takes on a temple-like importance, becoming a world into which one hesitates to invite visitors in case the atmosphere is broken. In this space is the debris, the flotsam or jetsam of leads, the discarded efforts, the false starts, that all provide the comforting backdrop to the uncertainty and speculative intuition that might one day produce an idea, a promising start, a surprise, or even, Art.

'Carpenters Road with 3 chairs'

oil on canvas | 152 x 210 cm | 2022

'Old Ford Road No.9'

oil on canvas | 81 x 100 cm | 2021

Working principally from memory these spaces take on qualities that a direct reinterpretation might not, assuming atmosphere or a slant of light when seen through the prism of time. This in its essence is what these paintings signify to me - they are an act of remembrance. Over time the studio becomes imbued with the unspoken history of life's events. Although the artist's struggle is often an internal one, it is one that finds its outpouring within the studio. The studio is a witness to the challenges and successes, digesting these narratives and having its own stories to tell. 

'Barrachina No.6'

oil on canvas | 40,5 x 60 cm | 2021

'Carpenters Road No.4'

pastel on paper | 50 x 70 cm | 2020

OLD FORD ROAD

In 1983, I started to need a larger studio, and ACME offered meOld Ford Road which had been a small Victorian music hall with a pub below. There had been a devastating fire which had nearly destroyed the entire building. A small industrious group of us worked hard to restore it, replacing the charred window frames and washing the sooty interior. We thrived there until one day in 1985 we suddenly had to leave. The old building was to be replaced by canal front flats and we were offered wonderful spaces at Carpenter´s Road near Stratford.

'Old Ford Road No.1'

oil on canvas | 40.5 x 60 cm | 2020

´Old Ford Road with Blue´ 

oil on canvas | 230 x 342 cm | 2023

'Carpenters Road No.12'

oil on canvas | 40.5 x 60 cm | 2022

'Old Ford Road No.8'

oil on canvas | 64 x 95 cm | 2021

Some of the greatest works in the history of art have revolved around the studio. I am thinking of Vermeer´s iconic The Art of Painting, sometimes known as An Artist in his Studio, Matisse´s Red Studio or indeed Velázquez´s Las Meninas. They are examples of works into which the artist has poured every grain of a lifetime of personal evolution as if it were the last word. 

'Carpenters Road No.7'

oil on canvas | 40.5 x 60 cm | 2021

'Carpenters Road No.6'

oil on canvas | 64 x 95 cm | 2020

In the drawings that I made during the Covid19 confinement, at the beginning of 2020, I made my first steps in this project. I depicted myself in these pallid spaces very much as the studios had been. There was a parallel between the confinement to which we were all subjected and the self-imposed isolation of my normal everyday life. Little by little, the physical nature of the painting process took over, with the brush marks not so much describing objects but rather asserting memory and presence. Slowly I began to replace my own image with that of my paintings and studio trappings.

'Carpenters Road No.1'

oil on canvas | 40.5 x 60 cm | 2020

'Barrachina No.3'

oil on canvas | 64 x 95 cm | 2020

CARPENTER'S ROAD

At the Old Yardley Factory on Carpenter's Road I had a top floor studio with a great deal of room and a fantastic skylight. I had the space for around five or six years until I decided to move to Madrid. It was too heart rending to give it up, so at first I sublet it to Rachel Whiteread. Some years later this marvellous building from the 1920s was demolished and replaced by the velodrome in the Olympic Park.