London Large

For a large part of last year I have been working on one big painting. It was finished just before the New Year but I haven't had the chance to post anything or take any photos . The Elephant (mainly the excitement about the elephant) and having to mostly evacuate my studio for Christmas/New Year has delayed me. However while I knew I had taken the original photographs that became this work a while ago I was horrified to find out (after sorting out a few files on my computer and taking a quick look at the folder containing the preliminary photographs and photoshops) that it was possible I'd started the actual painting in May of last year, let alone that the photos had been taken 9 months ago.

Now, I have in that time produced a few other works. You can lose a month and a half to the Bracknell piece and at least up to June/July time I was working on the Windsor paintings and digital works. Plus a week here and there on other unrelated projects, trips and dull, ordinary, day to day stuff. Still 4-6 months on one painting feels like a lot.

It shouldn't really, granted I probably could have worked more, those long summer days etc. But I have to remind myself that this 'single' work is in fact 4 paintings. The fact they come together to form one large canvas, the like not being seen since 2006 and those halcyon University days, is unimportant. They are not the large canvas of those days. Those works were a single image scaled up and frequently I have proven to myself that the complex and intricate image I'd have done at University on a 120 x 180 cm canvas takes almost the same amount of time as the same image done on a quarter of that size.

As you can see some of these paintings are quite complex (Houses of Parliament!!!!) so it's no wonder they took a while. It's just a shame that to the uneducated eye it might look like I've done very little this year compared to previous years. But hey, It was an experiment to see if I could continue to push my work and make large scale paintings again, especially ones that remain user friendly to my current situation. I also wanted to see If I could make a multiview image that I was truly proud of, and while there are elements of the finished work I am not quite happy with, I believe I have managed to do this. In fact I believe that I have managed to do it twice in 2009 with 'Welcome to Bracknell' as well. Not too bad then really.

Oh and if the final image below looks a bit funky its only because I had to put the 4 paintings together in Photoshop rather than take a photo of them assembled.