Staring out of the window

December 09, 2020

Staring out of the window

Snow on the lake at Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets ⓒGraham White

I have a clear memory of being around 10 years old and stuck in school while it was snowing outside. This rarely happened in Basingstoke, Hampshire and many of my classmates, including me, thought it was really exciting and Miss Gould, our teacher, got extremely annoyed with us for not concentrating on her. Comparing it with lockdown this year it was as exciting as noticing there wasn't any traffic where we live in London and the air smelled cleaner which was a novelty.

So, age ten was when I began to regard staring out of the window as an illicit activity. Something to be treasured and I've enjoyed doing it ever since.

Brixton Road ⓒHeather James

Years later I found myself living in Brixton in south London. I lived there for 14 years and I was fascinated by the view from my sitting room window on the second floor of a small block of flats. Eventually I got around to drawing this view and then (quite a long time later) painting it.

I've now been living in Hackney for 17 years and every day I've looked out of my art room window to see this area of grass that has been sort of landscaped. It's quiet and the neighbours hang out there when the weather is nice and their children play out there even when it isn't. Every so often gardeners from the council come and mow the grass. It's a bit like our own village green.

Most of the road we live in has been built since the 1970s which is odd since we are surrounded by Victorian housing. However, a quick look at the Bomb Sight map from WWII shows how much damage was inflicted on London during the Blitz and a quick look at some of the archived photos held in the Hackney Archives reveals how little was of our street was left by the end of the war. Far from being a tranquil spot this road must have felt like a version of hell for the people living here during the bombing.

My every day view in 2020

Back in the beginning of September Urban Sketchers London proposed 'sketching the history that surrounds us'. This idea was enthusiastically taken up by Art in the Park, the sketching group of the Islington Art Society which is where I got the idea from to examine the view in front of me. There are two houses at the end of the road that are missing so I decided to draw them back in to suggest what they might have looked like now if they hadn't been destroyed. It took me around six weeks to complete and it's the first time I've drawn a view where I had to use my imagination to fill in so much that is missing and it certainly made me stare out of the window at great length.