Martin Hearne

In these recent paintings of Bradford I have made an attempt to reflect my every day experience of the city and to make a record of a familiar place. They are an attempt to paint the city in a way that recreates some new aspect of that familiar experience.
They are mostly urban landscapes based on source material collected and made by traveling along the same streets every day. Seeing the same characters going to work, pedestrians in the street and the same buildings in changing light and weather.
People are portrayed against the backdrop of an urban/industrial landscape one where the old Victorian city merges with the new world of multicultural Bradford.
They explore the relationship between the figure and the landscape, or the figure in the landscape.
Many of the paintings are collaged together from different sources including memory, direct observations, photographs and/or drawings. These collages are often a combination different locations with superimposed figures that are made to conform to a convincing and conventional depiction of pictorial space but are in fact imaginary spaces.
The Bradford Disney pictures are an attempt to capture something of multicultural life in Bradford City Centre.