This documents the jaw dropping sight/site of a huge fly-tip I encountered on Purley Way, Croydon, Surrey. I had to record it in ‘widescreen’. It’s solid, and heavy. The waste has since been cleared away - but to where?

The painting was created after a chance discovery of a south London fly tip. The scale of it was jaw-dropping, and though ugly, I wanted to record the accumulated waste in some way. I managed to take a couple of photographs to work from before getting suspicious looks from people moving amongst the rubbish. Returning to the site the following day, I found it all boarded up and I think the whole thing has now been cleared away. It was a horror that will appear in another form somewhere else, one day, no doubt.

A monotone treatment let me study the rhythm of circles, cubes and straight lines in that landscape. Choosing to paint it in a cinematic format heightened the drama in the artwork, I hope. I wanted to allude to a scene of an epic battle and to also document the destruction and selfishness that accumulated over time. Though the subject matter was not long-lasting, by creating the scene in paint, within a frame on a reclaimed panel, I hoped to subvert the idea of idyllic landscape painting and bring it sharply into a modern reality. (April 2026)