Archive / Repetitions

A Love Story

In 2001 I was commissioned by Great Central Developments to produce three paintings for the public areas of St Paul's Chambers, a restoration project overlooking Sheffield's Peace Gardens. At the time I had recently separated from my wife and was temporarily living in my studio. The city became my home. I found myself returning repeatedly to the newly refurbished Peace Gardens, watching the everyday rituals unfolding there. Looking back, I realise these paintings became less about the place itself than about love, relationships and the different stages of life passing before me while I was trying to understand my own.

The series also marked a point where I had become increasingly confident using image transfers. Rather than simply collaging photographs onto the canvas, I was beginning to integrate repeated images into the structure of the paintings themselves, allowing them to echo both the architecture of the city and the emotional architecture of the subjects they explored.

Spenders depicts young couples crossing Pinstone Street, one young woman carrying a bunch of flowers. Behind them are repeated fragments of the old Thomas Cook travel agency signage, marking the first time that words became a significant visual element within my work. The title itself invites ambiguity. Does Thomas Cook suggest travel, escape and the excitement of new beginnings? Or do the words carry darker, more cynical associations about marriage, sexuality and domestic expectation? I have never wanted to resolve those questions. Like the relationships themselves, the meanings remain open.

Hymn takes its title from both the religious song and its near-homophone, hymen. Couples marrying at Sheffield Register Office often emerge into the Peace Gardens to have their photographs taken beside the fountains. Here, repeated images of brides merge together until they become a fountain themselves, transforming an individual celebration into a public monument. The bride appears uneasy, while the groom is absent. At the time I wasn't consciously making a painting about the end of my own marriage, but looking back it is difficult not to recognise the questions it was asking about love, commitment and loss.

Nana shifts to the opposite end of life's journey. Rows of elderly women, wrapped in winter coats and scarves, stand before the Peace Gardens' floral displays. Although they appear together as a crowd, each figure remains isolated within her own space. The painting reflects on ageing, memory and solitude without attempting to explain them. Even in company, they are alone.

Looking back, I think these paintings revealed something I was not yet able to articulate.. They are observations of Sheffield, but they are also observations of myself. Love, hope, commitment, loss and ageing all unfold within the same public space. At the time I believed I was painting the city. In retrospect, I realise I was also painting my own sense of abandonment and the sorrow of leaving the person I had once promised to remain with until death did us part.