Lost - Episode 2

These are portraits of fellow students at Medlock - the art school of Manchester Polytechnic - in the late 1980s.

First is Martin McCoy, then John Gordon - and finally Melissa Smith, a good friend who is a skilled ceramicist and potter in London.

You can see these paintings in more detail here. They are scanned from old, poor quality slides, and the originals are now lost.

Lost - Episode 1

This is the first in an occasional series of images of my paintings which I now believe are lost.

Appropriately these first two are paintings of the studio space in Manchester where I produced the work for my first degree between 1986-89.

I painted these two from my own studio space, which was upstairs in the Medlock building - a former toilet factory underneath a flyover, part of what was then Manchester Polytechnic.

It surprised me when I first arrived there that anyone could consider constructing artists' studios with no natural light whatsoever. Meanwhile, the Photography Department occupied a beautiful early Victorian building with huge windows - which they had blacked out to create darkrooms.

These were both on very large canvases - taller than me.

Sadly, when I graduated from Manchester and moved to London to commence my postgraduate I had to leave behind nearly all of the work I had accumulated as I had no transport of my own, and no-one willing to help me move it all. There is only so much you can carry on a National Express coach!

These images are scans of slides which I recently found in the attic.

I imagine that these paintings were either destroyed or painted over.