Bittersweet streets: a look at artist Julian Pinnick's new exhibition at Broadway Gallery

Standing on the roadside early in the morning, camera at the ready, Julian Pinnick waits for that perfect moment when the sun hits the row of shops on the high street. He knows exactly what he’s looking for, as suddenly the whole street illuminates and comes to life. 

“Just as I was standing there, the window cleaner turned up,” he says. “And then this guy with an orange jacket was sweeping, and it all came together in that moment.”

Now this isn’t just any street, but our very own Broad Street in Nottingham and this painting is called Broad Street Shuffle.

Julian is an artist who uses oil paints and coloured pencils to immortalise Nottingham’s streets. He has spent at least the last twelve years finding character and personality within the city’s walls and presenting scenes of familiarity and quiet drama within urban life. He studied Fine Art at De Montfort University in Leicester, where he learnt that “everything is disposable” and “to be less precious about what you’re producing”. That freedom gave him the space to grow and experiment as an artist. His work is now part of private and public collections, and in 2014, Julian was shortlisted for the A&I Artist of the Year award.

When he goes out on the search for something to paint, he doesn’t always know what he’s looking for. Walking through the city, something catches his eye, and he just knows he wants to capture it. He is particularly “drawn to buildings that are a bit worse for wear” as they hold more character. He says “you want to capture something that’s living, in that semi-state of decay”. The peeling paint, the graffiti – those details that we often overlook are a key part of the story.

There’s something bittersweet about Julian’s paintings, as they emanate a sense of nostalgia. Many of these stores, that are bursting with this character, don’t exist anymore. They are being replaced with big brands and chains that suck the colour out of our once ever-so-vibrant streets. Even people who used to work at these stores have expressed their excitement at being remembered in his work, as their history is slowly wiped off the map.

“A lot of these independent shops are disappearing.” he says. “The painting I did of Forest Road, I don’t think there’s any of those shops left.”

“They’re just blank shop fronts now. The character of the high street is disappearing, and I think that’s something that’s worth recording.”

But it’s not as simple as just painting what’s in front of him: “I don’t generally do the sort of painting where you go out with an easel and capture something there,” he says. “My work is a composition in the studio, which, in a way, is more traditional.”

When looking at Broad Street Shuffle, he says he brings different perspectives together. “You can’t stand and look at this scene as it is. I made it up, standing in front of each section, taking the photograph looking straight on. Then I piece them all together on the canvas.” 

The window cleaner, the bin man, the window-shoppers, they all slot into his snapshot of life on Broad Street.

But, in his painting called Ever Present Past, displaying the shops on Forest Road, the perspectives go even deeper. “I didn’t realise because I’d gathered these images over a period of time – it’s spring reflected in this [top] window, but autumn reflected in this [bottom] window. That sort of brings another dimension, it’s the passage of time”. Two seasons sit side by side in the same image.

That’s how long Julian looks at these buildings, soaking in their personality, and also why he calls his work “slow art”.

“We are used to being bombarded with, not thousands, but millions of images continually. So people tend not to look at anything. The attention span is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. When you do art, when you look at a subject, you look at it for hours, sometimes weeks. So you get time to develop the idea and really find the meaning of the subject. And you hope that other people, when they look at it, they’re going to spend at least more than a few seconds looking at it, and then they will find other things within it.”

Each of Julian’s pieces tells a story, but he says, “I don’t guide where the story is. I want the viewer to find a story in the scene. Rather than write a narrative myself, I let the viewer imagine what’s going on”. He encourages people to take those few extra seconds to truly see the depth of what’s in front of them.

And now people have the opportunity to do just that. Julian is holding his first solo exhibition in a decade, where he will present the scenes he has found across Nottingham over the years.

Held at Broadway Gallery, the exhibition represents the end of a chapter for Julian, who is planning to leave Nottingham and move to Scarborough by the end of the year, where there is a whole new urban adventure for him to explore.

But he wants this exhibition to have an impact and be thought-provoking for visitors. He hopes that “seeing these places that are disappearing, makes people think that independent businesses are worth supporting”.

Through his work, he wants to encourage people “to keep them going and keep character to the High Street”. 

Check out Street View – An Exhibition of Paintings by Julian Pinnick at Broadway Gallery from 16 - 21 June.

julianpinnick.co.uk