Bus Stop Mile End was the very first subject I painted when I moved to the East End in 1983. At that time I knew nothing of the existence of an earlier generation of artists who were concerned with this area. Even then I was already a bit out of step with my contemporaries who were more modernist in their approach to and treatments of motifs. But I wanted to tell the story just as I saw it. A sharp reminder of what I had observed happen in the Potteries of Stoke on Trent, where I had grown up. Isolated buildings picked off first, followed by whole streets demolished in swathes and with them a way of life that had supported and sustained a community for almost a century.

            
The building behind the bus stop was doomed in my eyes and I wanted to capture what remained before the bulldozers got to it. I was also struck by the chance encounter of two people coming together with the same objective, waiting for the bus to arrive. Did they have a conversation? Were they waiting for the same bus? Where are they now?

  
Less than a year later the building was demolished and the bus stop relocated. I had difficulty locating the spot where it and the building had stood when I visited the spot two years ago with Photographer Alex Pink and author of catalogue ‘Lost Time’ Fiona Atkins.

​

This painting will be on display from Thursday, 18th January, until Saturday 10th February 2018 at:

Abbott & Holder

30 Museum Street-opposite the British Museum-

           London, WC1A 1LH