The People's Choice Award 2024 Winner!
I’m delighted to reveal the good news that my painting won The People's Choice Award 2024. Initially it reached the top 50 finalists and people were asked to vote for their favourite painting. This Award allows the public to make their voices heard by voting for their favourite work from the competition’s impressive shortlist. The achievement of winning the People’s Choice Award is quite simply outstanding and it very much feels like a group win. I may have created the painting, but I couldn’t have done this without everyone making a connection with the painting and voting.
Earlier this year, after work, instead of our usual walk on the beach we went in the direction of the Texaco garage. I had a nugget of an idea. When I suggested it to my partner he took it in his stride, quite used to my random ideas. It occurred one evening on the way back to Newquay, I’d already developed an interest in night time paintings, exploring how natural and man-made light can transform a landscape. I’d painted some beautiful locations, but I wanted to see if I could transform a subject which would be considered less beautiful, when compared to the likes of St Michael’s Mount and The Eden Project, and make people stop and look.
The red of the garage contrasted really well against the dark blues of the sky. Standing by the roadside on The Gannel taking photos with cars speeding past us, the nugget turned into a fully fledged idea; ‘Driving Home’ was born.
Driving Home’ is a painting which works on many levels, which I think is what makes it so successful.
The first layer was about capturing something beautiful in what is a fairly mundane activity; driving or filling up your car with petrol. I wanted to encapsulate something of the normal everyday alongside the starry sky, showing how an ordinary scene is beautiful if we look at it in the right way.
The second layer is about highlighting our place under the magnificent and vast starry sky. A reminder that even as we go about our everyday lives, we should occasionally stop and appreciate the world around us, and treasure how we are part of something bigger and spectacular.
The third layer was about my connection to Newquay. The idea occurred to me one evening on the way back to Newquay, when driving home. The garage sits next to The Gannel, (river estuary between Newquay and Crantock), therefore effectively next to an open space. The bright red of the garage branding can be seen from quite a distance as you drive or walk along that part of The Gannel. It’s not quite the normal Newquay attraction such as Fistral beach or The Island, but it is iconic of Newquay in a different way. I think that captured the imagination of quite a few people, commenting on how it was a different view of Newquay, but still very much the Newquay we know and love.
The final layer was about connecting to a wider audience. This painting may be of a garage in Newquay but it’s also typical of a garage along many an ‘A’ road. People outside Cornwall recognise it as a garage they may have driven past; either travelling to and from work, collecting the kids from school, picking up some shopping or perhaps going on holiday. It’s a universally nostalgic connection with car journeys which almost everyone can relate to.
I think we all have memories of long journeys, usually at the beginning or end of the day when it’s still dark. Therefore there is a certain amount of nostalgia associated with those neon garage or service station signs. Sometimes linked to the relief of taking a break from being on the road, or perhaps a signal that you have passed another milestone of your journey.
Many people in Cornwall associate the ‘Nearly There’ or ‘Nearly Home’ trees, on the A30 near Lifton, with arriving in Cornwall and it promotes a powerful emotion of being so close to your end goal or destination, usually either home or holiday. I think more mundane subjects can also provoke those emotions, they just aren’t often painted! Many of us have our own version of a nearly home icon; perhaps it a weird shaped building of a supermarket or warehouse, a statue (some people may think of the Wicker Man in Somerset), a quirky pub, or that garage that was a life-saver because you needed to get something when all the other shops were shut. Everyone has a driving home story or two.
For me it’s the reassurance of recognisable scenery and the thought of home comforts around the corner. A powerful feeling of safety and security of coming home which we all experience from childhood and sticks with us throughout life. That is what ‘Driving Home’ means to me. Dorothy had it in a nutshell; there is no place like home!
The other good news is that Jack, the owner of the Texaco business, is purchasing the painting. I initially reached out to the garage after finding out about reaching the top 50. It was a weird email to write; you don’t know me but I’ve painted your garage and it’s reached the final of an international art competition,how do you feel about that?!
But I had nothing to worry about as he loved the painting and was very supportive. A fitting end to this story as the painting will come full circle back home to Newquay!
However you can purchase a print or a greeting card of this artwork - please use the links below.
