Winter 2021 Timeline
Soho Soul Tubby Hayes 'A Man in a Hurry', 54x73cm, Acrylic paint, chalk, charcoal on board.
"Going into Soho was a special thing. In 1985 I was living in Putney and Soho was like trekking to a mysterious place"
Ed Gray
Ed Gray
Bar Italia Frith Street Soho London 'Golden Day' 160x120cm, Acrylic paint, chalk, charcoal on canvas. 2010.
The Bar Italia painting detonated in Soho in 2010. Ed Gray appeared one day and talked to Antonio Polledri the owner of the inspirational café about presenting his creation at the shop.
It didn't take long for everybody to realise that a new artist had been born there and then.
The work was Ed Gray's calling card to Soho and the world.
It didn't take long for everybody to realise that a new artist had been born there and then.
The work was Ed Gray's calling card to Soho and the world.
Ed, what are your first memories of Soho?
Going into Soho was a special thing. In 1985 I was living in Putney and Soho was like trekking to a mysterious place. The records and music shops attracted me first. Soho was a place hidden away right there in the center of the city with a different energy. It attracted different people that you could not see elsewhere. It was music and jazz that got me started in Soho. I went to the jazz club above Ronnie Scotts quite often. And we would always stop by Bar Italia of course.
Who would you say influenced your style?
From an early age like many children initially I was influenced by cartoons, especially Hergé's Tin-tin series. I loved the way he told stories through strong imagery and layers of colour. My father showed me a book of Hogarth's engravings that got my attention. I didn't understand Hogarth's visual references at first but I was intrigued to see the people and the different faces and characters.
Going into Soho was a special thing. In 1985 I was living in Putney and Soho was like trekking to a mysterious place. The records and music shops attracted me first. Soho was a place hidden away right there in the center of the city with a different energy. It attracted different people that you could not see elsewhere. It was music and jazz that got me started in Soho. I went to the jazz club above Ronnie Scotts quite often. And we would always stop by Bar Italia of course.
Who would you say influenced your style?
From an early age like many children initially I was influenced by cartoons, especially Hergé's Tin-tin series. I loved the way he told stories through strong imagery and layers of colour. My father showed me a book of Hogarth's engravings that got my attention. I didn't understand Hogarth's visual references at first but I was intrigued to see the people and the different faces and characters.
At the end of this interview SOHO IMAGE brings you for the first time ever the complete process of creation of Ed Gray's Bar Italia work.
Bar Italia study 114x83cm. Acrylic Paint, chalk, charcoal on board.
"I try to find depth in the characters that I study, the way I see it. I'm trying to capture modern life in all its aspects as I see it in the street"
Ed Gray
Ed Gray
You are more Hogarthian than Tin-tinesque?
Hogarth is such a beautiful painter, luxurious in the handling of paint. I could never paint like that. I'm more graphic. I love his characterisation and his intention to reveal truth about a complex society. I try to find depth in the characters that I study, the way I see it. I'm trying to capture modern life in all its aspects as I see it in the street. To do that I have to stop, look and sketch for a long while.
What materials do you use to capture that?
I work initially with chalk and charcoal. Sometimes I use chalk and red brick that I find on the riverbed in Rotherhithe where I live. I like the idea of re-using something that belongs to the fabric of the city to create something new.
Then I use layers of acrylic to build up colour, later rubbed down with sandpaper. Finally sometimes I mix glitter into the varnish. I call that process Glitter & Grime.
Where did you do your art studies?
I went to Wimbledon Art College before leaving London to go to study Fine Art in Cardiff. The emphasis there was not so much on a formal painting education. Exciting things were happening in the college to do with time-based media work and performance. I learnt to paint by studying the art that I loved, Lowry and the artists of the early Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance like Jacob Lawrence and Archibald Motley. I was an outsider there really in terms of my style.
A bit like Soho itself and Bar Italia, which you painted in 2010.
From way back my interest was always people.
Do you use photography for your characters?
I don't use photography for documenting people. My work comes from sketching them from a vantage point in the street or place. That's the beginning of my work. It's a bit like a film location. You first find the right place to stand. Finding the right location is important to sketch faces and people but I only photograph the location of my drawings probably in the last day. When I sketch people, I stand for hours in the right place and then sketch each one at different moments. That stage can take me two or three days.
Then in my studio I create a panorama of the location and try to fit the characters into a big canvas. This process can take me a long time, sometimes months.
In your painting of Bar Italia I recognized a few of the regulars. Do you sketch the characters that you see?
I try to keep as much as possible of the character of the real people that I see during the sketching. Overall I can do about 60-70 different sketches. I then pin them on the canvas to see how they fit and eventually I re-draw them into the canvas but I have to give them unity.
You have to adapt all the units of time per character you see during the sketching to one unit of time in the canvas. That's tricky.
Sometimes they don't fit. That's why the work takes me about three months to complete.
Hogarth is such a beautiful painter, luxurious in the handling of paint. I could never paint like that. I'm more graphic. I love his characterisation and his intention to reveal truth about a complex society. I try to find depth in the characters that I study, the way I see it. I'm trying to capture modern life in all its aspects as I see it in the street. To do that I have to stop, look and sketch for a long while.
What materials do you use to capture that?
I work initially with chalk and charcoal. Sometimes I use chalk and red brick that I find on the riverbed in Rotherhithe where I live. I like the idea of re-using something that belongs to the fabric of the city to create something new.
Then I use layers of acrylic to build up colour, later rubbed down with sandpaper. Finally sometimes I mix glitter into the varnish. I call that process Glitter & Grime.
Where did you do your art studies?
I went to Wimbledon Art College before leaving London to go to study Fine Art in Cardiff. The emphasis there was not so much on a formal painting education. Exciting things were happening in the college to do with time-based media work and performance. I learnt to paint by studying the art that I loved, Lowry and the artists of the early Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance like Jacob Lawrence and Archibald Motley. I was an outsider there really in terms of my style.
A bit like Soho itself and Bar Italia, which you painted in 2010.
From way back my interest was always people.
Do you use photography for your characters?
I don't use photography for documenting people. My work comes from sketching them from a vantage point in the street or place. That's the beginning of my work. It's a bit like a film location. You first find the right place to stand. Finding the right location is important to sketch faces and people but I only photograph the location of my drawings probably in the last day. When I sketch people, I stand for hours in the right place and then sketch each one at different moments. That stage can take me two or three days.
Then in my studio I create a panorama of the location and try to fit the characters into a big canvas. This process can take me a long time, sometimes months.
In your painting of Bar Italia I recognized a few of the regulars. Do you sketch the characters that you see?
I try to keep as much as possible of the character of the real people that I see during the sketching. Overall I can do about 60-70 different sketches. I then pin them on the canvas to see how they fit and eventually I re-draw them into the canvas but I have to give them unity.
You have to adapt all the units of time per character you see during the sketching to one unit of time in the canvas. That's tricky.
Sometimes they don't fit. That's why the work takes me about three months to complete.
"My work comes from sketching from a vantage point in the street or place. That's the beginning of my work. It's a bit like a film location"
Ed Gray
Ed Gray
St Thomas's Hospital Lambeth 'Ode to Torsion' (Huck Funt) 160x120cm, Acrylic paint, chalk, charcoal, glitter on canvas.
Details of above.
Berwick Street Market Soho 2006, 100x75cm, Acrylic, chalk and charcoal on canvas, 2006.
Westend NIghthawks Charing Cross 2004, 76x81cm, Acrylic paint, chalk and charcoal on canvas, 2004.
"The place that I've always been welcomed the most has been London. It's a place where you can hide. That's very appealing too"
Ed Gray
Ed Gray
How did you approach the Bar Italia concept canvas?
There were two periods of the 24 hours that interested me at Bar Italia. That was early in the morning and late at night. I started with the morning but didn't get round to the night. The morning has a great set of local people already. It's a different atmosphere from the night.
The night remains as a future project then?
I hope so.
When did you manage to earn your living as an artist?
To get started is always difficult. In the late 90s and early 2000s I got an art teaching post at St Thomas Apostle secondary school in Nunhead. Then I applied to a residency with Masterworks Foundation that was being offered in Bermuda after a tip-off form a friend. My application was successful and I became friends with the director Tom Butterfield. In Bermuda was the first time I managed to get a studio and do just painting. It was a brilliant initiative by Tom and the foundation, visionary really. They invited international artists to create a base there and now they have a museum. I did three months in Bermuda.
Do you consider London as 'your place'? Where you are going to live the rest of your life?
I'm an artist. You are always a stranger, if you are an artist. Because you are putting yourself outside everyday life. To stand in a street with a sketchbook and draw people going to work you've got to step out of the place you're in. But certainly the place that I've always been welcomed the most has been London. It's a place where you can hide. That's very appealing too.
Have your work been affected by the pandemic?
It has affected it hugely. Both my young children are doing home schooling and my wife is at home as well and we have to look after them. I still manage to go to the studio but it has slowed down the work.
What I am painting today is about sketch work I did four years ago. My current canvas, about St Thomas's Hospital, is work I started in 2016. My painting is about details and it takes a long time and energy for an idea to generate.
Taking Bar Italia as your 'London Epicenter' canvas. What comes next?
I return to certain areas where I lived or that interest me such as south-east London, Soho, Piccadilly, Camden and Primrose Hill.
I have a Google map of my paintings that my website designer suggested for Ed Gray Art about two years ago. It helps a lot for background of my paintings and workshops.
There were two periods of the 24 hours that interested me at Bar Italia. That was early in the morning and late at night. I started with the morning but didn't get round to the night. The morning has a great set of local people already. It's a different atmosphere from the night.
The night remains as a future project then?
I hope so.
When did you manage to earn your living as an artist?
To get started is always difficult. In the late 90s and early 2000s I got an art teaching post at St Thomas Apostle secondary school in Nunhead. Then I applied to a residency with Masterworks Foundation that was being offered in Bermuda after a tip-off form a friend. My application was successful and I became friends with the director Tom Butterfield. In Bermuda was the first time I managed to get a studio and do just painting. It was a brilliant initiative by Tom and the foundation, visionary really. They invited international artists to create a base there and now they have a museum. I did three months in Bermuda.
Do you consider London as 'your place'? Where you are going to live the rest of your life?
I'm an artist. You are always a stranger, if you are an artist. Because you are putting yourself outside everyday life. To stand in a street with a sketchbook and draw people going to work you've got to step out of the place you're in. But certainly the place that I've always been welcomed the most has been London. It's a place where you can hide. That's very appealing too.
Have your work been affected by the pandemic?
It has affected it hugely. Both my young children are doing home schooling and my wife is at home as well and we have to look after them. I still manage to go to the studio but it has slowed down the work.
What I am painting today is about sketch work I did four years ago. My current canvas, about St Thomas's Hospital, is work I started in 2016. My painting is about details and it takes a long time and energy for an idea to generate.
Taking Bar Italia as your 'London Epicenter' canvas. What comes next?
I return to certain areas where I lived or that interest me such as south-east London, Soho, Piccadilly, Camden and Primrose Hill.
I have a Google map of my paintings that my website designer suggested for Ed Gray Art about two years ago. It helps a lot for background of my paintings and workshops.
Westminster Old Palace Yard 'Ode to Joy', 160x120cm, Acrylic paint, chalk, charcoal on canvas, 2019.
Waterloo Station York Road 'Adoration of the Approach', Acrylic paint and mixed media on board. 2018.
Details of above.
"What I felt when I saw that it seemed very symbolic of a place having its heart ripped out"
Ed Gray
Ed Gray
What do you think about Soho now?
The painting that I have just finished is about the Dog & Duck pub in Soho. At the end of that street there is a building that was just being knocked out. What I felt when I saw that it seemed very symbolic of a place having its heart ripped out.
It's the rapidness of the change. It's been quite shocking to see. I'm concerned.
It's almost impossible to stop the tide. It's not just Soho. There's lots of parts of London now. So many new buildings going up. You wonder now about the pandemic and what kind of cities are we going to live in. Perhaps there's a whole new way of life we are going to be in.
The painting Dog and Duck in Bateman and Frith was inspired by many years of drinking in the pub. You can see the crane in question at the bottom of the street.
Dog and Duck Ruck Soho (Frith and Bateman), 2020, 50x40cm, Acrylic and glitter on canvas.
The purpose of SOHO IMAGE is to transfer Soho proactivity into the creative world of Soho. A reminder of what Soho is also about.
Where we live in Rotherhithe there are big constructions going on. They are imposing a city on top of a city. Doesn't seem to me the right way of doing it. The great thing about Soho over the years was that it grew organically. There has been hundreds of years of influx of people that were absorbed. The artisans, the Huguenots. These waves of people that come in and bring their identity and create something.
The developers sense that a place has some new buzz and they immediately translate it to money. They make them bland.
Where we live in Rotherhithe there are big constructions going on. They are imposing a city on top of a city. Doesn't seem to me the right way of doing it. The great thing about Soho over the years was that it grew organically. There has been hundreds of years of influx of people that were absorbed. The artisans, the Huguenots. These waves of people that come in and bring their identity and create something.
The developers sense that a place has some new buzz and they immediately translate it to money. They make them bland.
Parliament Square Whitehall Westminster 'Nothing to See Here' 132x112cm, Acrylic paint, chalk, charcoal on canvas. 2007.
"There is a hidden narrative which is our own personal invisible narrative.
We are bystanders"
Ed Gray
We are bystanders"
Ed Gray
We can change that with good ideas. Look at the example of your friend Tom Butterfield. He had a plan together with the Masterworks Foundation and created something new, more valuable.
There is a hidden narrative which is in our own personal invisible narrative. We are bystanders.
There seem to be bigger players than us.
It would be lovely to have a say.
If the right people seize the moment, there will be an opportunity. SOHO IMAGE wants creative people to have a say. So, what's next, Ed?
If I want to be what people say I am, 'a chronicler of London'. Then for me not paint about this time, it would be difficult to accept that. And at the moment this time is about the pandemic. I don't want to be lightweight or whimsical.
The pandemic is hidden away. I have nothing firm yet. The St Thomas's Hospital canvas that I've just painted is not about this time. It was about Austerity. I need to see more and I want to think more. I don't want just to paint people in masks. It's got to be about the place first, then about the people.
That's the challenge.
I need characters. That's what motivates me. It comes from love, love for the people.
The COVID-19 wards is the epicenter of the pandemic.
That is happening all over the country. I need to show what is happening here, in London. I've got some ideas of people and places. Nothing firm yet.
When was the last time you went to Soho?
I cycled with my son after the first wave. Then I took him and my daughter in the car to see the Xmas lights in December.
Bar Italia is planning to continue --pandemic permitting-- with the outdoor tables and chairs. In a sunny day it would be great to take them there. It's a wonderful atmosphere. How old are your kids?
My daughter is 7 and my son is nearly 6.
Perfect for a sunny day out in Soho. When the pandemic is over I will invite you for an espresso in Bar Italia.
There is a hidden narrative which is in our own personal invisible narrative. We are bystanders.
There seem to be bigger players than us.
It would be lovely to have a say.
If the right people seize the moment, there will be an opportunity. SOHO IMAGE wants creative people to have a say. So, what's next, Ed?
If I want to be what people say I am, 'a chronicler of London'. Then for me not paint about this time, it would be difficult to accept that. And at the moment this time is about the pandemic. I don't want to be lightweight or whimsical.
The pandemic is hidden away. I have nothing firm yet. The St Thomas's Hospital canvas that I've just painted is not about this time. It was about Austerity. I need to see more and I want to think more. I don't want just to paint people in masks. It's got to be about the place first, then about the people.
That's the challenge.
I need characters. That's what motivates me. It comes from love, love for the people.
The COVID-19 wards is the epicenter of the pandemic.
That is happening all over the country. I need to show what is happening here, in London. I've got some ideas of people and places. Nothing firm yet.
When was the last time you went to Soho?
I cycled with my son after the first wave. Then I took him and my daughter in the car to see the Xmas lights in December.
Bar Italia is planning to continue --pandemic permitting-- with the outdoor tables and chairs. In a sunny day it would be great to take them there. It's a wonderful atmosphere. How old are your kids?
My daughter is 7 and my son is nearly 6.
Perfect for a sunny day out in Soho. When the pandemic is over I will invite you for an espresso in Bar Italia.
Dilly Hens at the Circus 2007, 122x92cm, Acrylic paint, chalk, charcoal on canvas, 2007.
Waterloo Bridge 'Waterloo Sunset', 100x75cm, Acrylic paint, chalk and charcoal on canvas. 2005.
IN-DEPTH
BAR ITALIA CASE
THE STUDIO PROCESS.
THE IN-SITU SKETCHES
This is Luca, the Barista.
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Usual suspects lineup in colour: Luca serving a frothy cappuccino, Mark Baxter, Antonio Polledri, Veronica and Rupert Everett (from l to r)