A Painting

Entitled The Fields Beneath it is in oil on canvas, a reused canvas, 18″ x 25 1/2″ depicting a street corner near my home. The corner turns away from the main road and onto a local road. Many times i have approached this corner with the anticipation of what may lie beyond it as i turn down the hill. The street beyond changes periodically in small ways. The initial painting on this canvas was a landscape of fields stretched out as diamonds into the distance, traces of them can still be seen beneath this depiction of the urban landscape. The title comes from a book by Gillian Tyndall on the history of Kentish Town that like many of the villages of London were fields until they were built on. For nearly a decade i have approached this corner but now i fear i can no longer afford to live in the area and begin to say my farewells. The changes being made to my home threaten to leave it as no longer the sanctuary it has been, already it is undermined by unpleasantness from the shop below. So i consider finding a new home but to my dismay prices have risen to such a degree that i fear i must leave the area i call home and move to some other part of London i can afford. I feel it keenly as a loss. The light in the picture comes from around the corner, it is morning light suggestive of new beginnings, but obscured. With the light there is the promise of something better than the darker, it is positive. But there is too the tinge of regret, a sadness.

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