Recent Paintings at Bingham Library

Today marks the opening of an exhibition of 14 of my recent paintings at Bingham public library, Nottinghamshire. The library is in Eaton Place, close to the Market Place and to the main free car park.

Paintings are for sale upon enquiry to the library staff, and purchases may be collected on the last day of the exhibition, Saturday 22nd December. Prices are as follows:

Hyde Park Corner     £250

Portland Place     £250

St Pancras Skyline     £280

Secret Island     £150

Portobello Haar     £100

Fittee     £150

The Doctor’s In Winter     £100

Hot Prefab     £100

Awayday     £100

The Classic Murder     £120

Sissinghurst     £150

The Deal Castle     £200

Pavilion Gardens Café     £150

Dungeness     £200

The subject matter is varied, although some of the works recall the long hot summer this year. Scenes include Sissinghurst, Brighton and Dungeness in the south of England, and “Fittee” (Aberdeen) and “Portobello Haar” from north of the border. As usual, there are London scenes – busy traffic at Hyde Park Corner and in Portland Place, and the atmospheric tenements which used to fringe the eastern side of St Pancras Station, a familiar sight to many a rail traveller from the East Midlands.

“The Classic Murder” is an imaginary location inspired by Tolmers Square, Euston, while “The Deal Castle” is based on a pub just across the road from the wonderful church of St George in the East, in east London, but renamed and relocated to a fictional setting. “Hot Prefab” and “Secret Island” are idealised portrayals of humble surroundings on a summer’s day, while “The doctor’s in winter” perhaps recalls childhood emotions surrounding medical appointments. This painting was inspired by a visit to the Ranmoor district of Sheffield earlier this year. “Awayday” tries to recapture something of the childhood experience of waiting to go on a train journey from a country station, the location being very loosely derived from childhood trips on the Crewe line west of Derby.

 
If you can get to Bingham during December, please go along to the library, and enjoy.

My Kind Of Place : An Exhibition of Paintings

Today, 1st October, sees the opening at Bingham Library, Nottinghamshire, of a display of twelve of my recent oil paintings. Called “My Kind Of Place” the show will run throughout October, and all the items are for sale.

Bingham Library is in Eaton Place, off the Market Place, with extensive free car parking nearby, accessed via Newgate Street. The library’s opening hours are: Monday 9-1 ; Tuesday 9-7 ; Wednesday 9-12 ; Thursday 9-7 ; Friday 9-7 ; Saturday 9-4.

Titles and prices are as follows:

Sunny Day, Brixton : £180

Chelsea Embankment : £100

West from Westbourne Park : £250

South Kensington After a Long Illness : £150

November : £80

St Pancras Morning: £100

Gas and Electricity: £150

Sodium Time: £80

Signs of Spring: £100

Boulevard: £100

The Gentlemen at South End Green: £200

Over the Hedge: £100

Five of the paintings are based on largely residential scenes in West Bridgford. Anyone familiar with that delightful Nottingham suburb will have little difficulty in recognising the locations. 

  Signs of Spring    © R. Abbott 2016

 The other seven works are of inner London, with locations that include Battersea and Hampstead, and favouring my interests in public transport, street furniture and heavy industry.

 West from Westbourne Park    © R. Abbott 2016

 All of the works represent “My Kind Of Place”, the sort of locations I find visually stimulating and commanding of affection. It’s so hard to describe one’s own creative efforts without waffling pretentiously, so it’s really much better if you go along and have a look at the paintings for yourself. I hope you will.

Introduction to 'Not West Bridgford'

Like jokes, paintings are probably best left unexplained. And like many other creative endeavours, it’s often the case with paintings – at least in my experience – that the ones destined to succeed are completed relatively swiftly and painlessly. The troublesome ones requiring endless alteration and fiddling around with are usually, though by no means invariably, those that are never going to be any good.

One of my favourite recent paintings, currently on show at Bingham library, Notts., that (a) needs little explanation, (b) proceeded easily to completion, and (c) appears to have succeeded, is “Road near the park”.

 

“Road near the park” (greyscale version), © R. Abbott  2015

 

The road in question is Edward Road, near its junction with Crosby Road, and the park is Bridgford Park, in West Bridgford, Nottingham. Visiting the location last autumn I was immediately entranced by the scene, by the angles of the roads, the sunlight on the brickwork, and the tall telegraph pole with its characteristic little curly spike on the top, one of my earliest fetishes of street furniture. Instantly I knew that I had walked into a successful picture, so I took a photograph for reference, and the painting followed speedily and with little effort.

The location is within half a mile of my childhood stamping ground. The road in which I grew up was once described by the local evening paper as being typically suburban, though now I cannot recall whether this judgement was deemed favourable or not. From my perspective I am happy to be associated with such a background, and while aware of the popular sneers against suburbia, I see little that is fundamentally wrong with this component of the urban environment; after all, statistically, suburbs are where most of us live.

Many years of travelling around, in the UK and elsewhere, have widened my knowledge of suburbs, of how and why they came to be, what they look like, how they feel. More than a few, I’ve discovered, remind me of West Bridgford. Several  years ago I had the whimsical idea that it would be fun to put together a small exhibition of images that would be called ‘Not West Bridgford’, photographs of places that looked like West Bridgford, but weren’t. Ideally, I imagined that the exhibition would be a physical collection of photographs and explicatory text, perhaps held in the local public library. Perhaps one day it will be, but for the time being I am proposing something more modest.

 
Instead, therefore, I am planning to post images from this ‘Not West Bridgford’ collection online, at intervals over the next few months. The intention, apart from some mild amusement to those who recognise what the images are not, is to explore some themes of suburban life in this delightful Nottingham district and to consider how they relate to other specimens of suburbia.

Exhibition of Paintings at Bingham Library

From now until the end of February I have an exhibition of recent paintings at Bingham Library. Opening hours are: Mondays 9 – 1 ; Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays 9 -7 ; Wednesdays 9 -12 ; Saturdays 9 – 4 ; Sundays closed.

Bingham Library is situated in Eaton Place, off the Market Place, and there is free car parking nearby (access via Newgate Street).

The works on display are unframed oil paintings. They are mostly townscapes, with locations in West Bridgford, Nottingham, and London. Details are as follows:

Autumnal North London    £80

Inspired by a visit to York Way in Islington

 

Browne’s and Bellamy’s    £100

The location is Cyril Road in West Bridgford. The title refers to former nearby residents

 

By the Park    £80

Imaginary West Bridgford. A hybrid of Holme and Albert Roads

 

Hickling    £80

The Grantham Canal basin

 

Hopperesque at Hoylake    £80

The breezy north west corner of the Wirral

 

Midland, bound for Cricklewood    £100

The title is from Sir John Betjeman’s “Parliament Hill Fields” (1945). An imaginary version of Lismore Circus, an area now demolished and rebuilt

 

Notting Hill night    £100

Ledbury Road, as it might have been before gentrification

 

Place de Dublin    £150

This strange road junction in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, the “Europe” quarter behind the Gare St Lazare, was also the subject of a famous 1877 painting by Gustave Caillebotte

 

Road near the Park    £100

Based on Edward Road in West Bridgford

 

Ryde Pier    £80

The pedestrian pier at Ryde, Isle of Wight

 

Summer Shadows    £150

Holland Park Avenue in west London

 

The Old School    £100

The path in front of Musters Road Infants’ School in West Bridgford. A Christmas Party is about to end, and a steam train on the adjacent Midland Railway has just passed. Otherwise, “Nothing has changed it’s still the same”.

 

The Test Match    £150

An optimistic view of a much loved pub in Gordon Road, West Bridgford

 

Weekday Cross Junction    £150

A Nottingham location, where the Great Central Railway entered the tunnel leading northwards into the Victoria Station. A spot now almost unidentifiable beneath concrete and trams