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The Art Show

'As a kid, I wanted something to happen,' says George Shaw.

Well, who didn't? But Shaw has made this feeling his muse. He's become famous for painting the Tile Hill estate in Coventry where he grew up in the 70s: its houses, paths, garages and woods. He paints with an intensity that has critics comparing him to Edward Hopper and the German Romantic Caspar David Friedrich. And he does it all with Humbrol enamels – the same shiny paints he used as a boy on his Airfix models.

With titles like Number 57 and The Path Behind The Shops, the paintings at first seem hyper-realistic. But there are no people, cars or satellite dishes; no wheelie-bins or crushed drinks cans – nothing that can date the scenes to the 21st century, or to the 1970s, for that matter. These buildings and woods are hard-edged but also have the timeless quality of a dream.

'I'm looking for evidence,' says Shaw. 'I'm not sure of what. Perhaps that I was here. These paintings come out of a mourning for the person I used to be – a passionate teenager, who read art books and novels and poems and biographies, watched films and TV and listened to music.'

'I feel like I'm trying to gather something up,' he adds, prowling the concrete, camera in hand, 'like a sleuth.'

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From the series, Scenes from the Passion by George Shaw
(Courtesy of George Shaw)

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