Original artwork description:

Soho is special to me. It is my London. I have come here on walks for decades, alone or not, happy or sad, transfixed by the light and noise, by the movement. At night or in dusk it feels haunted, a City of Dreadful Delight, Mammon or Sodom. The doorways can seem little changed since the 1960s, corridors that smell of feet, wet carpet, neon lights harsh and unforgiving and shelves of dated adult magazines. It is the streets of the flaneur, the observer unseen. It is timeless too, with a frenetic energy that constantly renews. Soho is evocative, the buildings nostalgic, windows of dirty net curtains and cheap pinks lamps. I imagine an underworld of smart gangsters and 1950s prostitutes, little tailor shops, wholesalers with teak counters and frosted glass. From here I can go anywhere in London, to the glamour and light of department stores, the safety of eternal art galleries and their worlds of beauty and myth. I decide to continue to Compton Street to inhale roasting coffee beans and the tang of falafel. But I linger a bit, feeling louche, nostalgic and intrigued. This work is full of life and colour, a very London work, a great collection starter. It can hang without a frame as it is 0.4 inches deep.

Materials used:

acrylic and card

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