See the video below

For the last couple of years, I’ve been mulling over a painting. More often than not, I’ve been mulling it over in my head rather than actually painting it, which is usually a sign that either the idea is very good or that I’m avoiding the hard bit.

This painting is based in East London, specifically Shadwell, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It’s an area with plenty of history. There was a notorious riot here in the 1930s, and there’s also a beautiful church designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, which famously featured in The Long Good Friday.

But the church isn’t what I want to paint.

Instead, I’m interested in a stretch of road nearby. At first glance, it’s hardly an obvious subject for a painting: a busy London road, traffic moving in every direction, and an old, very tired pub opposite. For 364 days of the year, it looks much as you might expect.

But on one day of the year, everything changes.

This is part of the route of the London Marathon, and, more specifically, a rather extraordinary section where the marathon passes in two directions at once. The runners on one side of the road are heading towards the finish, while those on the other have considerably further to go. By the time they reach this point, most will already be very tired indeed.

Why do this painting?

Note: Some people have asked if the painting will be available for prints once it is complete. And yes it will be. Whenever that is!

A few years ago, I was watching the London Marathon as a spectator, and I was struck by what an extraordinary thing it is to do. Twenty-six miles is a very long way, but behind every person running it is a story about how they came to be there.

Some stories are funny. Some are inspiring. Some are deeply moving, and some are tragic.

And that gave me an idea.

What if I painted the London Marathon, but every person in the painting was a real runner, with their own story of how they came to be there that day?

It would be quite different from most of my paintings. Rather than the painting being primarily about the artist, this one would be about the people in it — more than forty individuals, each with their own reason for taking part.

The idea was simple enough. The difficult part, of course, was finding those people.

So that’s where the project has reached. I’ve now got around forty runners who have put their names forward, but there are still a few spaces available.

If you’ve run the London Marathon and would like to be part of the painting, or if you know someone who has, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch through whichever of the many magical and mysterious ways of communicating on the internet you prefer.

It’s a painting I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

And, appropriately enough, it’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

marathon drawing

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