Crystal Palace Park Grates – Morning, Noon and Night
My daily walks in Crystal Palace Park have already inspired a number of new works. A considerable amount of time walking is spent looking at the ground, and it is the seasonal dramas immediately underfoot that have caught my attention. The pathways are like canvases that are constantly being redrawn with falling leaves, torrential rain, and changing light, and the drainage grates beside the paths present themselves as a constant grid motif for changing imagery. These flat surfaces can be sectioned off and observed as starting points for painting. Each painting is both a formal and subjective challenge; the surface has to be ordered into a satisfactory design and the paint manipulated into an evocative image. Unlike the flat ground the painted surface can be deliberately shallow and abstract or punctured with light and space to create an illusion of space. The humble draining grates are transformed daily by the fall of leaves and seeds or the changing levels of water they struggle to manage, but the grid pattern remains a constant. I had been thinking of using this motif for a series of four works to mark the seasons, or simply the passage of time. The three photographic images illustrated here, Morning, Noon and Night, were shown in the Pedder Photography Exhibition in the Bigger Picture Gallery, London in October 2010