Empty Avenues in The Good Life

Empty Avenues 1 (Palace Road, Surbiton), Graphitint pans & Graphitone pencil, A4 Eco Artway sketchbook. Surbiton Good Life

All these glamorous destinations – Greece, the Jurassic Coast – but as we come up to the Surbiton and the Seething Wells Festival it’s time to celebrate the Good Life with Tom and Barbara and yes, some goats. Surbiton is used as a stand-in for suburbia – even featured in Harry Potter – but usually the filming is done elsewhere! Not the starry lights of Hollywood for Surbiton, that wouldn’t do! So here is a little ‘shine’ on both of those places – the pondlife of Seething Wells and the morphean climes of Surbiton with work I did earlier in the year, but reflects the current wintry weather. The God Life or the Good Life?

I'm Seething (Wells), Brush pen, A4 sketchbook. Surbiton Good Life — I’m Seething (Wells), Brush pen, A4 sketchbook.

Firstly Seething Wells, the filter beds are still in planning limbo, still the nearest thing to me, still a frequent subject in my work. And now with goats – it wasn’t just in the garden of Tom Good, someone has installed them in the field next to the filter beds and the building I painted oh-so-many-years-ago. So I drew them with my brush pen, harder than it sounds as they kept running away, even though there were many fences between me and them…. Also we have a night watercolour of the filter beds, named after the two geese that turned up for a night swim.

Goats, Filter Beds, Seetihing Wells, Brush Pen and Wash, A4 sketchbook. Surbiton — Goats, Filter Beds, Seetihing Wells, Brush Pen and Wash, A4 sketchbook.

Two Geese (Filter Beds At Night), Watercolour and Fountain Pen, Artway Panoramic Cotton sketchbook. — Goats, Filter Beds, Seetihing Wells, Brush Pen and Wash, A4 sketchbook.

Moving not too far away, we have the view from what I call the Electric Temple – again an early work – as part of a series I called Empty Avenues after the John Foxx & The Belbury Circle track.I later found out John Foxx used to live in Surbiton, spook! You can tell this ink drawing was done the winter/early spring by the trees – March according to my Instagram post, and now it’s autumn they are going back to that naked state.

From The Electric Temple (Empty Avenues 2), Fountain Pen with Sketchink and wash, A4 Artway Eco sketchbook Surbiton — From The Electric Temple (Empty Avenues 2), Fountain Pen with Sketchink and wash, A4 Artway Eco sketchbook

The second of the Empty Avenues was paradoxically the first – in Feb or early March a Derwent Graphitint painting of the moon over Palace Road. Not exactly The Avenue as in the Good Life, but nearby.