After Turner - From the Custard Factory to Chieti with a 25 year gap, acrylic on canvas, 2026, £1500

This painting started 25 years ago on a dusty floor, in an abandoned Victorian Industrial building, the converted Bird’s Custard factory, it had taken on the form of a creative centre in the heart of rugged, a little dilapidated Digbeth, Birmingham

I already had a longing for the hot streets of Italian culture, the canvas started as the main piazza in Siena with its sweeping canopies and rich terracotta, I brought it across the seas and it sat in a cupboard for 15 years.

In Abruzzo I decided to work on it again, this time with a Turner painting of Venice in mind. Cotton transformation - This painting connects industrial Birmingham’s creative rebirth with the luminous, atmospheric Italian inspirations of Siena and the lagoon light of J.M.W. Turner’s Venice across a 25-year journey