Kentish Town Road early on Christmas morning, right? That was our first thought on seeing this eerily still painting by local artist Martin Brown. After all, the big day is one of the few times when this particular junction, where the high street forks into Highgate and Fortess roads respectively, is unlikely to be traffic-clogged.
Actually, Brown had other intentions when he was working on this picture. In what’s called ‘Kentish Town Road, intersection 2016’, he’s attempting what he calls a grand scene with many historical layers combining into a sort of tableau.
“I was thinking about painters like Hogarth, Constable, and Turner with their depictions of London, and also other European painters like Canaletto and Vermeer,” he says. “Then I imposed onto this scene the contemporary interruptions of road signs, road markings, traffic lights and graffiti.”
An Australian who moved to London fourteen years ago, Brown has been living in the locale for the past half decade. He’s exhibited extensively in solo and group shows as far afield as Dublin and Sydney, and with Paris-based artist Anthony White in the French capital.
His paintings question the urban environment, looking at the landscape through “the lens of history” to depict the passage of time.
So why Kentish Town? “It somehow straddles just within the limits of the inner city, with all its buzz and grit, and the more historically preserved parts of Hampstead. It’s an area I love to live in and find a constant source of inspiration. There’s a mixture of old and new that’s particularly interesting as it’s constantly being added to or adjusted, while still retaining its old past. ”
The corner of NW5 depicted above is at the heart of Kentish Town. This intersection interests Brown as it’s “a complete mixture of all the things I’m trying to do in a painting.”
The large arrow on the road is “a nod to Bacon”, says Brown. “And on the left the buildings have become more dissected, layered and subsequently more abstract. I’ve reduced some of the elements in the road signs to highlight the connections to modernism and abstraction.”
He also observed that the wall on the left-hand side changes colour through the day. “It has a patina and aged surface that then has the contemporary addition of graffiti, an anti-aesthetic element. Hand-painted by a street artist, there’s a geometry in the repetition of the triangles of the rooftops that lead to scaffolding on the right that are echoed in the grid marking on the road.”
The Boston, Tufnell Park
oil on linen 151.5cm x 117.5cm 2012. Image copyright: Martin Brown
“This is another winter scene. There was a deliberate decision to add the extensions to the canvas: one was meant as a closed form, like an object (the top of the Boston), the other was an open form or deep space. One is also more detailed, the other more abstracted. The decision to make the extensions to the painting was made at the very start. They are meant not only to extend the painting but to draw out the varied approaches within the picture. The painting also has a double triangle composition, one being an old building, the other modern.”
Why no human life or traffic? “I’ve deliberately left people and movement out of my pictures because I want the paintings to exist in a longer passage of time,” Brown says. “As soon as you add movement it becomes a snapshot, a frozen moment.”
And finally, how long did the Kentish Town Road work take to complete? “It was painted over several months, not a particular time of the day or year. It was begun in the winter, and completed in the autumn.”
However, he concedes, “clouds, being a regular fixture of the London landscape, preventing the presence of shadows, do add a wintry tone to the painting.”
So is it Christmas morning or not? You decide.
Images kindly reproduced courtesy the artist, all rights reserved, Martin Brown. For more info see martinbrownartist.com
Feature updated Nov 2021
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