Painting London Underground

In June 2009 I started a long-term project of making paintings of people in the London Underground. The Tube is the place to observe Londoners in all their glorious diversity – I wanted to try to capture some of that in the paintings, and also the slightly secret voyeurism that most of us indulge in when watching, and wondering about, our fellow travellers underground. As it’s impossible to make paintings actually in the Underground I decided to create a replica of some Tube carriage seats in the studio where my passengers could sit and be painted undisturbed by arriving at a new station every two minutes. This collection of twenty-five canvasses was exhibited at Bankside Gallery in July 2013, my personal contribution to the 150th anniversary of London Underground.