Above: Ken Howard, Peter Brown, Roy Connelly – click to view

This is a recent interview with Ken Howard RA in which he talks about the difficulties encountered when painting on the streets of London.  The problem is not one of perspective,  capturing the light or changing weather but of being moved on under the spurious excuse of ‘health and safety’.

I was pleased to get a mention in the article, along with Pete the Street – Peter Brown NEAC.

The Health and Safety Executive saw fit to respond with a letter defending common sense:

“Real health and safety is about dealing with risks that are likely to cause serious harm or even death to those in workplaces. I would urge you to challenge those jobsworths who persist in devaluing the real and important stuff by using “elf ‘n’ safety” as an easy excuse for spoiling everyone else’s enjoyment.”

You can read their letter in full here on the HSE website.

Finally, in a humourous response to the original story in the Telegraph, The Guardian newspaper found 10 ‘serious menaces’ in Trafalgar Square that were apparently missed by the wardens.

The plan was to paint in Trafalgar Square at night after the rain.

The rain stopped for just long enough for me to set up and start painting.  But, 25 minutes into the picture the rain became so heavy I had to pack up.  You can see how far I got in the picture above.

Above: Rain water on my palette.

I met up with fellow artist Richard Price and we each painted a couple of small pictures in Trafalgar Square. The light was good despite the sun going in and out all day and the wind that did its best to blow debris on the wet paint.

Landscape painter Karl Terry spotted us on his way home from the Chelsea Flower Show and his wife found herself painted into our pictures. Thanks Jo for being so patient!

Thanks also to Lucy for the squeeze of cadmium red

Painting the evening light in Trafalgar Square. Photograph by Magdalena Rakita ©2009

One thing you become accustomed to when painting outside is having your photo taken. This great black and white photograph was kindly emailed to me by talented photographer Magdalena Rakita. If you would like to see more of her work have a look at Magdalena’s flickr pages.

Trafalgar Square - Spring Light by Roy Connelly

 London By Six at Advocate Galleries

39 Church Road, Wimbledon Village, London SW19 5DQ
17 – 27 April 2009

A group show of London paintings by Rodney Billington, Roy Connelly, Alec Macdonald, The Pope Twins, Malcolm Surridge and Charlotte Wallis.