Andrew Gifford. Cities of the North East

I had a yearning to paint the North East for some time – my last few painting trips had been in hot countries with bleaching light and shadows and distances filled with blue violets and mauves. I wanted to paint the heavy leaden skies that you often get over the Tees or the Tyne, turning everything into a palette of muted greys and blues. I also longed to spend a bit of time in the northeast to remind myself where I’m from and reconnect with it. I traveled up in early April planning to paint the cold rivers and grey bellied skies, but those plans were scuppered by a freak sunny spell where there wasn’t a cloud for a week.

When I was a student at Newcastle university I painted in Wallsend quite a bit, so I thought it would be interesting to revisit it. On my return I immediately noticed that the cranes that once stood behind the high street like huge blue and yellow metal dinosaurs, and which made the houses look like miniature models, were all gone. I made a painting of the high street, probably because it is such a typical North East street with the red brick and the blue star pub, I painted it from a bus stop and so had an almost constant queue of locals chatting to me in that strong but soft and lilting Geordie accent that you get in Wallsend .

With an hour left of spring sunshine I moved down to the river and the industrial area to start a painting. Something magical happened to the river and the sky as the concrete jetties and warehouses turned the colour of molten steel from a blast furnace. I returned over three afternoons finishing the final study late in the evening with a head torch. These studies were the starting point for four large studio paintings that I worked on later that spring.

I spent about a month in all, in Newcastle , Sunderland and Middlesbrough painting things that interested me, some views were places that I’ve wanted to paint for a long time ,some I just came across , but I do think that if you’re from a place and are completely familiar with it to an extent that it is part of your psyche ,then it is much easier to see beyond the obvious and find the nuances that make a place particular, and that is what I tried to achieve with this body of work.

Andrew Gifford