65cm x 43cm Acrylic painting

2 week lead time on this item as it needs to be framed, framing included in the price, local collection or special delivery required.

This is an early painting from the beginning of the1970’s. I had done ‘extra’ Art at school where a few boys had paid to do art classes on Saturdays. My second secondary school had no art at all so I was sent on two mornings a week to the local art school to join with the students doing their foundation courses. 

I had done a couple of years as a trainee in a Merchant bank and then out in industry still a teenager and free, as I had joined up with a friend as a photographer and we got to drive all over mainland Britain and parts of Europe. Often overnight to get to where the work was; living in and developing our films in a VW van.

One day buzzing up the motorway Roland was driving and we passed a huge number of immense tall aerials going up a couple of hundred feet into the air grabbing a camera to take a picture Roland said I mustn’t as it was a secret ‘listening facility’ for monitoring global radio traffic. It was huge beautiful with its stark thin dark vertical lines reaching up towards the boiling clouds right next-door to a busy motorway in plain sight and secret. Photography not allowed so I did a painting.

Now, I paint on prepared plywood but then hardboard or cardboard was the normal grounds or watercolour paper if you used your acrylics (which were new) in thin washes.

The paint boxes had slotted arms that folded out of the lid so one could have two small panels for painting with oils safely transported without smudging or smearing. Oils were such a mess and so no paints other than a small watercolour set were with us. 

Returning to base in Sussex a week or so later I did the painting from memory the image is still clear in my mind: they are not in the painting as they would take away from the pure verticality of the masts but there were hundreds of stays a dozen or so on each mast to hold them up against the gales of winter.

I have always painted what intrudes into by muddled consciousness. This is a perfect example.