Recent Paintings by Marc Gooderham

Lost Control Again (Hanbury St)

A year has passed since I came across the work of painter Marc Gooderham and here you see a selection of the new pictures he has created since then – of scenes that will be familiar to many readers. “My first year was just about getting going,” he admitted to me, “but now I’m in the flow of it and I’m in control of it. As time has gone by, I’ve thought more about composition and colour.”

“There’s so much more colour in my pictures because of the street artists, some of those works are so well painted, yet they’re giving it away – it keeps the streets really vibrant.” said Marc, modestly acknowledging the symbiotic relationship his paintings on canvas have with this most democratic of art forms.

Yet, speaking of his picture of Hanbury St, he says, “I saw that grey and the explosion of colour beside it, and I realised the grey had as much power as the colour.” Although they may appear superficially photorealistic, Marc subtly manipulates the elements he discovers to construct an intense personal vision which has a dreamlike quality. In each of his paintings, there is a dynamic contrast between the detailed rendering of architecture and the images applied by street artists, often amplified by an ethereal blue sky overhead.

It takes around a month for Marc to create a painting, building it up from architectural sketches and balancing the components. During the last year, as his paintings have got larger and his palette bolder, he has acquired a passionate following which means that once the pictures are the complete, the gallery takes them out of his hands. “It helps to have that routine of  working on something and getting it finished within the month,” Marc confirmed, enjoying the momentum, “I like to paint them and there are people now that appreciate what I do, so that’s a good common ground.”

“Each of these paintings is about a discovery,” he confided to me, “I stumble upon them – I go out to explore the area and even though I am walking down familiar streets, I always find a new scene. There’s a lot to paint because the East End changes so quickly and my mission is to hunt out potential paintings, discovering more buildings that deserve to be painted.”

Marc Gooderham in Hanbury St yesterday.

The Split (Holywell Lane Car Park)

Wild and Free (Dalston Lane) – “I crept behind a car park, crawled through a fence and stumbled upon this, a large old house surrounded by scarecrows. It looked like a fantasy, a haunted house where the scarecrows were guarding the place.”

Blue Above the Wires (Mare St)

Smoke Stacks (Dalston Lane)

Nightfall on Whitepost Lane (Hackney Wick) – “I realised it looked as if it was glowing and so I went back during the day to find the right time when it looked like it was still alive, even though it was derelict.”

Fashion Street

Marc Gooderham in Toynbee St.

Marc Gooderham’s work is represented by Artisan Galleries

You may also like to read my original profile

Marc Gooderham, Painter