A selection of paintings from a series started in 2010 that was called initially called ‘View’ for the first four or five years, and which at first consisted almost entirely of life studies, of views from the many studios I lived and worked in across London. The constant movement was due to my often impecunious circumstances, coupled with ever-rising rent and/or yet another block of artist studios being demolished or regenerated to make way for yet ever more ‘Exclusive Apartments’, in what became the ever-changing, safety deposit box, global-financialised, hedge-fund London skyline. This inevitably lends the work a diaristic aspect. They trace a history, both personal and interpersonal, subjective and objective (in varying degrees of ‘accuracy’). This is also linked with contemporary journals, writings, sketches, photographs, videos that were made during the successive period. At first I was obsessed with painting the views from life, as it is an entirely different visual and phenomenological experience when actually facing a city/landscape. This is easily explained by way of experience - the next time one looks at a landscape, (especially true of a busy city skyline) and attempts to fully take it in, one will notice that in the gestalt, one naturally is drawn to x, y, z elements. If one then tries to take a photograph of this ‘view’ as perceived, you will immediately see that the photograph is very different from how one percieves the view with one’s eyes/mind. This has a lot to do with the parallax view of natural vision, but is also to do existential experience of Be-ing itself. It is an entirely different experience, simply looking at a photograph, to actually being, existentially, actually immersed in the view of a city, where it is not merely the view, but also the sounds, the smell, the ‘feel’, and one’s sense of being situated in a particular time and space. And, to be situated in time and space, is to point out the obvious, is also to be situated in a given socio-cultural political landscape, in a historical moment in time. I would later begin ‘allowing’ myself to use photographs for reference, as well as reworkings of earlier paintings, painting from memory, as well as freeform and more abstract city/landscapes or an admixture of various approaches. It’s an ongoing process…