About the Image

Reflected Glory

For all its geometric lines, there’s an organic feel to this painting. The earthy browns and leaf greens would be at home in a forest. Even the dark vertical band of black and blue suggests a mass of teeming, hairy, caterpillars edging their way out of sight. A brick wall can be fascinating to architecture lovers like me. They tell you a lot about a building.

At first glance, the wall you’re looking at could be in any city, but hints of its provenance will quickly announce a grander pedigree.

Architecture lovers will see them immediately.

A large block of green marble polished to a sheen. Brick work patterns of grooves in a style more commonly found in stone architecture. The profile on the edges of the shadows, indicating deep grooves. Like in carved masonry. It’s a London wall.

Even the jet-black down-pipe has pretensions. Not round but square in profile. The connecting joint decorated with a seal, or Maker’s Mark, it’s hard to tell. Any other wall, would be just a wall. The bricks are weathered from decades of exposure to the elements. Sharp edges softened and eroded. No straight lines to be found here, well not many at least.

The wall is something that conveys opulence. Even though it’s just a wall. Reflecting the glory of its creator, or rather the person, it was created for. There’s no doubt, whoever it was the man, and it was most likely a man, wanted to make an impression. Even in the boring old walls.

The windows are clean and reflect an image of the street, and a car. I know little of cars but feel that this should be an expensive car. It is in my imagination. A status symbol reflected in another status symbol. Written on the window is the end of the word beauty. A comment on the car perhaps?

Realism may pervade the image but this is very much an abstract architecture painting. Reflections, mirrors and beauty all caught up together creating an impression of a world based in reality, but born of the imagination. Ideas made real by vision and execution, we’re denied the whole picture, but architecture lovers will be able to imagine the rest.

Art is an obvious reflection of glory