It sometimes takes an artist’s outlook to show you something different about the city you live in, revealing a curious, unconventional beauty in the spaces more often avoided or overlooked.
Simon Hopkinson’s upcoming exhibitions at Bristol’s Grant Bradley Gallery and Tobacco Theatre bar are like a nature trail through the city streets igniting a sense of recognition and even nostalgia in viewers, while simultaneously showing them a side of Bristol they’ve never seen before.

“It’s all there, for anyone to see, but people rarely take the time to slow down and actually take it in,” Simon comments.
In fact, most of us are more likely to speed up when walking through the kinds of areas Simon is drawn to. “I like subways, abandoned buildings and anywhere with concrete, rusting metal and graffiti. They’re the places you’re not expected to find beautiful, but I do.”

Simon is particularly attracted to the sense of melancholy and unease these spots can evoke. “These kinds of spaces are all about modern fears. They can seem very threatening, but at the same time, because they’re off the beaten track, there’s something very calming about them.”

For Simon capturing these views is a bit like going on a nature walk armed with a camera, and hoping to snap the perfect shot just as some rare creature emerges. He’ll walk for hours, often with some half envisioned scene in mind. “I head out with a sort of dream image in my mind’s eye of the kind of thing I’m searching for. It’s too unspecific to paint straight from the imagination, but if I look for long enough I’ll usually find something that gives off the same mood, the same atmosphere. It’s instinctive.”

A full day of photographing urban dark spots tends to yield just a handful of images that really tap into the magic Simon is looking for. He then sets to work with acrylic paints recreating and reinterpreting the scene to more closely match the one in his head. The result will be an emotive work of art where the shadows and light almost have a physical presence.

Simon does take care when going out to hunt down these locations, however, especially as his wife Vanessa is often with him, ready to pose for the camera lens.
“I always associate subways with the need to check over your shoulder so I make sure I go down into the subway first to make sure there’s no one down there,” he says. “These kinds of spaces have a rough, raw personality of their own without anyone needing to add to it!”
Vanessa appears as an indistinct figure in many of Simon’s paintings, including the glowing Subway 4, which serves as the poster image for several of his upcoming exhibitions.

Yet for Simon it is the light that comes first in making a scene worth capturing, and often, surprising as this may be, he see this as being intensified by certain pieces of rubbish.
“I know it sounds strange, but random litter can really enhance the settings,” he says. “It doesn’t need to be anything spectacular or aesthetically pleasing – it might just be a crumpled crisp packet. For me the form is secondary, it’s all about presence and light – the way an object occupies a space.”
As Simon points out, his paintings could just as easily be inspired by parts of Birmingham or Liverpool or Manchester, or any other big city with areas of urban decay.

“It’s about viewing these places in a different way, which is often to do with your own expectations and frame of mind,” he says. “When you’re in a receptive space, virtually everything you look at can have significance, and beauty.”

Simon’s paintings will be exhibited at these Bristol galleries for the rest of the year:  Grant Bradley Gallery: 1-27 August, Tobacco Factory Theatre bar:  29 August – 1 October; Bristol Folk House 3-29 September and Bocabar  2 December 2011 – 28 January 2012

Find out more about Simon Hopkinson at www.simonhopkinsonart.co.uk

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Judy Darley

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