Multicolour Sweet Shop

Cornershop
Acrylic paint on canvas
25 x 25 x 3.5cm


One of my favorite views in Cardiff, a small shop on a very acute corner in what used to be called Cardiff Docks. It's not the most salubrious area, somewhere architecture students will go to study 'urban grain', so a multicolour makeover was a reasonably difficult challenge.

The result seems to be quite successful, if I don't say so myself. The red car and the passers-by help to add a bit of scale. For the fans of clutter there is street furniture, posters, fire alarms and a satellite dish...

Buildings have faces and characters so I guess you can describe this as another portrait. In that case it's a fusion of my many black & white pen & ink street scenes and my technicolour painted heads!!

Burel Bath

A few days ago I came across Richard Burel, a self-taught mixed media artist, in Bath. Bath is one of the most attractive cities you can find, generally built from the warm yellow bath stone, which makes it a particularly attractive subject to paint.

Burel's paintings were gorgeously rich and detailed, every one of them a colourful graphic creation. They particularly appealed to my architect-trained sensibilities! In my view, the various numbers and lettering incorporated into the composition are well suited to a city-scape. After all, even a city as rarified as Bath is buzzing with shoppers, commerce and graphic information. I have to say, I admire an artist who portrays modern life 'warts and all', with vehicles, shopping bags and other debris.

One of my next projects will be a city-scape painting or, at least, a recognisable detail of my home city.

Burel's website can be found at http://www.richardburelart.com/