The idea of a New York show was first floated by Johnny Messum at the beginning of 2024. I had painted New York in 2017 over two trips, mainly on small boards, but we thought, let’s do some big bangers on canvas for this show.
Hell yes!
This time, I painted over seven trips, clocking up 84 days between April 2024 and September 2025. My last visit coincided with the exhibition, but with the Messums team enthusiastically manning the fort, I was able to spend much of my time painting the city’s streets one more time. Too late to be officially part of the show, some of these new paintings snuck in informally – propped up, unframed, in the gallery.
On my first two trips for this show, I was pretty much on my own. I painted Brooklyn.
The Donut Plant, Flatbush and Bergen, 2024, Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm
“To start painting, walk out of your front door and turn left”. I have no idea who said that, but it is pretty much what I did.
At the end of Park Place, where I was staying, was Flatbush Avenue with yellow traffic lights, noisy oversized cars and trucks, crossings, buses, sidewalks, bodegas, delicatessens, train station entrances… I painted the bridges down at the East River (how could I not?) and Flatbush, which is where I met Joe from the hardware store, who sowed the seed of Saturday Night Fever in my head.
Downtown Brooklyn from Flatbush and Bergen, 2024, Oil on canvas, 40 x 51 cm
I wanted to find the street where Travolta walked down like an oversexed peacock in the opening sequence, and this took me on the D to 86th Street.
Midday, June, 86th and 20th, Brooklyn, 2023, Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76 cm
Then I ventured to Coney Island (I had to!) There I met excited New Yorkers taking a day at the beach, the Puerto Rican Lady with the blue hair who had been a dancer in her day, the photographer who asked me to put him in and all the others… And yes, I had a Nathan’s hot dog.
During that second trip in June, I ventured to Manhattan. First Flatiron, then Chinatown, where I painted Pell and Mott. I had got a small taste of the Lower East Side, and I liked it. So, on trip #3 in September 2024, I headed straight for Chinatown… and that was it.
Pell and Mott, 2024, Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 51 cm (My first painting of Chinatown)
At the end of that third trip, my NYC resident friend and fellow painter Pete Sinjin (more on him later) said, “I just wonder if perhaps you should look at other areas too, Pete?” But I was not going to listen to that. The more I painted it, the more I loved the Lower East Side.
The rare times we did go uptown, I found it clinical, and cold, and just obscenely expensive. I liked coffees and pineapple buns for a dollar each. I didn’t mind the restrooms in the parks with piss on the floors (and sometimes even shit). It was grim seeing the people struggling with substance abuse, but despite their troubles, they were polite and didn’t give me too much grief.
Everyone seemed to rub along, and I guess I became just another bit of Chinatown furniture. And there just seemed to be more energy down there. People lived their lives on the streets, shopping, sitting on benches in the parks, talking, playing cards, watching handball, smoking, shouting and laughing. But I wasn’t just comfortable there, I was excited. The noise of the trains on the Manhattan Bridge, the wind, the dust, the heat, the cold – it was brilliant!
Looking uptown, Bowery South of Grand, 2025, Oil on canvas, 40 x 51 cm
My base was an apartment on Park Place, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. While looking into where to stay, I ran the idea of New Jersey by an old mate, Peter Sherwin, a New Yorker but long-time resident of Bath, where I met him when I was wielding my charcoal on the streets back in 1993.
“Is it easy to commute into Manhattan from New Jersey?” I asked him.
“Hang on, Pete. My brother and I have an apartment in Brooklyn that the family uses from time to time. You access it under the stoop. It’s very dark and dingy. We don’t expect any money, and I am not after a freebie painting. Just leave it clean.’
It was perfect. The two-bedroom basement apartment was 30 yards from 7th Avenue station, where I could catch the B and Q, and 5 minutes from Grand Army Plaza, with the 2 and 3 lines.
Above me lived Peter’s second son, John, with his partner Cooper. John would pop down every now and then with a cafetiere of his ‘rocket fuel’ coffee to look at the latest paintings or take me out for a bagel.
As I lay in the bed in that apartment, I could hear the trains below coming in and out of the station. On the MTA app, I could look up the live train times for 7th Avenue. ‘There’s a Q train two minutes away heading to Manhattan.’ I would wait to hear it rumble in and out. I found that ridiculously exciting!
My Days . . .
I’d wake up, usually around 5:30am, mainly because that would be 10:30am UK time. I would be tense with anticipation for the day, and for ten minutes or so, I’d just lie there.
Where was I going to paint? Which train to catch?
Then I’d get up and start to make a plan. What is the weather? How do I translate that to Celsius? What should I wear (from shorts and sliders to thermal underwear, jeans, waterproof trousers, fleecy, scarf and coat)? Do I need the brolly? Which boards or canvases to bring? Do I have enough turpentine and medium? Do I have clean rags? How many postcards should I bring to hand out? And on the last two trips, after John had suggested ‘Instagram Lives’ would be a good idea – tripod, power packs, lapel mics, and chargers.
I would try to get to the station before 7am, as the trains would get rammed around then. The box easel would weigh around 12kg or 14kg with big canvases, and the rucksack – not much less with the tripod, paint and fluids. Navigating them through the turn styles and on crowded trains was interesting, but simply carrying them between painting locations over 12-hour days was exhausting. My hands became markedly stronger and developed calluses – not a painter’s hands. I quite liked that, but it was my shoulders and neck that got it worst.
I had a love-hate relationship with the trains. At first, I’d stand if there wasn’t ample room to sit. But by the end, I was wriggling my bum into any spaces on seats I could find. The Q and B are dirty but fast and direct. The 2 stops everywhere. The C and E are clean.
But I never tired, on the Q or B, of surfacing from DeKalb Avenue and crossing the Manhattan Bridge – the flickering morning light, and that view over the East River – Brooklyn Bridge and downtown Manhattan behind, and then – Lower East Side and graffiti, streets, and buildings that belonged in a film set.
Another morning treat was the zoetrope I discovered immediately after DeKalb Avenue, as you head to Manhattan on the Q or B. A lit, moving cartoon appears through slits in the wall for 30 seconds or so – some colourful shapes transform bob around, then something bounces away. Why? Who cares. How wonderful.
During my July trip, the air conditioning in the trains was respite from the oppressive heat and humidity of the streets and stations. But if you got on a carriage where it was broken…!!! I appeared from Grand Army Plaza from a 2 train one evening, every inch of my clothing and body dripping with sweat. But I came up the steps to a dark evening and pouring rain. I was cooled and washed in seconds – heaven!
For food, during the day, I’d eat anything close to hand. If I hadn’t had a coffee at the apartment, I’d buy one from a Chinese bakery. They weren’t that great, but I got used to them, and they were cheap. As and when I’d get hungry in the day, I would eat anything close to hand – dumplings, bao buns, sandwiches, pineapple buns… In the evenings, seven pieces of ricotta and spinach pasta boiled for four minutes, maybe a Brooklyn lager. On earlier trips, I would watch what I ate. But by the end, my sugar intake had skyrocketed, I had developed a taste for burgers, and my occasional one beer at the end of the day had become an obligatory two every night.
I’d drop my easel and rucksack in the hall when I came in, declaring each night, “Hi honey, I’m home!” to no one, apart from the two times Pete Sherwin was there and the one time my brother-in-law, Barry, briefly joined me. I’d keep a rough diary in my sketchbook, which I’d write in the evenings before crashing out around 11pm.
The Practicalities . . .
On my first trip, I took boards and small canvases which could fit in a large suitcase. For the second trip, I sent a ton of canvases, which I collected from the local UPS store on Flatbush – enough for a show. The Sherwins let me use a cupboard in the bedroom for storage where I could get all the canvases, easel, brolly, mediums, paints, the lot. I left a set of clothes – for painting and for smart. As I needed to bring finished canvases back, I had my mate Alex make up a wooden box on which he painted ‘Mr Peter Brown’ in white, beautifully on the side. It was big enough to carry several 30” x 25” canvases along with 20” x 25”s. Anything smaller than this would go in a suitcase, and when it came to it, 30” x 35”s did too, removed from the stretcher and rolled up (just – diagonally – corner to corner).
Studio Mantelpiece, February 2025, Oil on canvas, 76 x 76 cm (featuring my wooden box for transporting canvases)
On the box’s first trip in, the airline misplaced it. I was horrified. They were completely unfazed by this and, as promised, delivered it the next day to the door. Filled with completed paintings at the end of that trip, John recommended an AirTag, which gave me great peace of mind. The TSA opened that box every time it left JFK and every time it came in – 12 times in total, on each occasion decorating it with more and more of their ‘Inspected by US Transportation Security Administration’ stickers, and a new note inside letting me know. It was very hard to carry, with a large suitcase and a cabin bag rammed with painting boards. It wasn’t until my penultimate trip that I put wheels on the bottom, which made life far easier.
The People . . .
Siblings who posed on Mott Street
I met so many people. Here are some below. It’s quite a lot and maybe not desperately interesting, so I’ve put it in italics. Feel free to skip to the next bit.
Gregory – the burrito restaurant owner on Flatbush Ave
Regina – who lives near St Marks and Flatbush, Brooklyn, who had moved here in 1975 when she ‘ran from the train station to her flat’
Adonis – who lived near Jet’s Pizza, Flatbush Avenue
Joe (as mentioned earlier) – from the hardware store on Flatbush Avenue. “You know I used to go dancing with Eugen Robinson; he was the original Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever. We used to get dressed up to the nines and go dancing at Odyssey on a Saturday night back in the day.”
Pete – who owned the takeaway near Clark Street where I’d get my Colombian Drip before heading down to the East River to paint the bridges. He said I should move to New York. I said my wife wouldn’t be happy.
Fransisc – son of the street food vendor, inspired by me painting, he did a drawing for me – featured in the Afternoon painting of 86th.
May – who bought me shrimp and noodles on Bowery and watched me paint for a couple of hours. At one point, a beautiful red fly landed on Simon’s shoulder. To our horror, she brushed it off and stamped on it. “Lanterns! They kill all the trees!” … Well, that one won’t.
UPS driver – pulling in beside me on Pell and Mott and asking if he was in my way and offering to move.
Chinese lady – who would watch me on Pell and Mott and bring me coffee. She said I was handsome, but I think that was a language error!
The drunk Moroccan guy on 86th – who decided to direct the traffic around a broken down vehicle, but it took his attention from me.
Penny the masseuse from Bowery – I never got my feet done.
The coconut water seller on Canal Street and his pushy mate – who wanted to buy prints of the painting for them both.
The hard-working woman from the veg shop on Bowery – who features twice in the brimmed hat in ‘Looking uptown, Bowery South of Grand’
The couple from Oslo – who wanted to buy me a coffee on Henry Street
The Irish woman – who lived in a four-story red brick block right by that noisy bridge!
Regina – who brought me a sponge cake on a cold March morning on Catherine and Madison.
The lovely lady whose name I have forgotten again – who had a place too in Colchester, and brought me a clear envelope, a bulldog clip, and a sign saying, ‘please take one’ for my postcards advertising the exhibition.
Gary, with his two girls – who tried to hustle a painting for $500 in Madison Square Park. He nearly clinched it when he got his daughters to do the sad eyes!
The guy who owned the six-storey block on Henry Street – who loved the painting but said it was too expensive for him!
The man from the deli in Harlem – who brought us out delicious smoothies, and the manager, ‘Devon’, from the Starbucks next door, who brought us iced water.
The lady I met on my last trip to the Village – who told me that she got on the 1 train at Christopher St on the morning of 11th September 2001 and alighted at Cortlandt Street below the twin towers, where she worked, to darkness and smoke. Her story went on to the horrors she had witnessed that day and the decimation of the West Village. One of the many things that stuck with her was hearing the dogs barking the next day for their owners who had not returned.
The fireman – who gave me $20 on 9-11, 2025. “You take it or I drop it on the floor right here.”
The guy who gave me 10 bucks as a thank you for retrieving a $1 bill that had blown out of his hand on Flatbush Avenue.
…and so it goes on.
But I also had a bit of a posse. ‘The Boys,’ as my son Toby called them after meeting them all when he and his girlfriend Sim came over. Or as we daubed ourselves, ‘The Corner Boys’ as we often met on the corner of Chrystie and Grand, or the ‘Canal Street Boys’ (which inevitably and inanely became ‘The C’anal Boys’).
Chrystie and Grand before the Fire, 2024, Oil on canvas, 76 x 89 cm (The view from the corner where we’d meet)
There were four of us:
It starts with Pete Sinjin, a plein air painter from Brooklyn. (Check his YouTube channel, Painting with Pete). He had seen my work some years before at the Victoria Art Gallery when visiting Bath. But we got to know each other at a distance through a very inaccurate Facebook post by Jerry Saltz, the renowned art commentator based in New York, who had confused our work. We decided through messaging that we should meet for a beer. When I arrived in Brooklyn on the first trip, I messaged Pete:
“I’m in Brooklyn. Let’s get a beer one night.”
“Really? I’ve just landed at Heathrow!”
We met on the second trip one evening, drank way too much beer and an Old Fashioned, and he fell off his bike on the way home.
Then there was Simon.
After a session painting ‘September Morning, Canal Street from Chrystie St’ in September 2024, on my third trip, I went for a pee in the nearby Popeyes. When I appeared from the restroom, I found Simon examining my painting on the easel propped up against the wall. We got chatting. He asked if he could watch me. And that was it. He referred to himself as my shadow and watched me paint most of my paintings for the rest of the trips.
Lastly, there was Marc Jasikovic (@mjasikovic on Instagram)
Marc had messaged me a couple of times on social media asking if he could join me painting, and I had given my usual answer of “It’s me. I’m weird. I just need to be on my own to paint,” which he graciously understood. However, a few days after meeting Simon, I had set up outside the Mahayana Buddhist Temple on Canal Street. I think it was my second sitting, and I had posted on Instagram the day before that I would return. After an hour or so, I was aware that someone was looking from about ten yards away. Then Simon rocked up and started to watch. At the end of the session, I was talking to Simon and noticed the man was still there, so I beckoned him over. And then we were four.
October Morning, 7am, Canal St from the Mahayana Buddhist Temple, 2024, Oil on canvas, 89 x 76 cm (The painting Marc observed me working on from 10 yards back)
So when I had made my plans in the morning before getting on the train, I’d text the lads where I’d be and at what time. Marc could make it most times, but coming from New Jersey after the school run, he’d arrive around 11am. Pete could usually make it and would come an hour or two before Marc. Simon could always make it, and it wasn’t long before we’d slip into a routine. Simon would turn up an hour or so after I’d set up, say ‘Good morning, Mr Brown. It’s your shadow,” watch for a few minutes before saying, ‘OK, I’m gonna get some breakfast. Can I bring you a coffee and a pineapple bun?”
He’d return with the treats; I would neck the bun and slurp some coffee before balancing it on my palette and returning to painting. Simon would watch quietly and intently for hours, sometimes asking questions or saying something nice about how I’d applied some paint. We talked a lot about single-point perspective and measured drawing, about colour, observation… He would translate what people said in Mandarin or Cantonese. Laughing, he would say, “That lady was saying you are very good at Chinese writing”.
Manhattan Bridge, East Broadway, March 2025, Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76 cm
A passerby noted to Simon that while I could clearly write in Chinese, a character was missing a stroke in my painting. When she pointed it out in the actual view, they realised you could not see it, I think, due to some reflection or something.
He is wonderful company, and I could paint completely undistracted all day, but also have a good laugh and a chat now and then. As I got later into the trips, I began to relax more and tried to enjoy the moments of friendship. At first, I would paint through lunch, asking if someone was passing a bakery to get me a bun. But as I relaxed in the final two trips, we’d go for lunch together, and at the end of the day, sometimes get a meal. We had a favourite restaurant on Bowery where we laughed that I was the only white face. The food was delicious and cost about the same as a mocktail in the West Village. Marc was very good at finding good places to eat, and we loved a place on Eldridge that served rice rolls like oversized sushi. The restroom had a sign saying “Don’t stand on the lavatory,” much to our amusement.
Obviously, Pete knew places, too. He took us to Saigon Shack on MacDougal Street when we were painting in the Village, which was sublime. We’d occasionally get a beer in the evenings, but it was usually just Simon and me at the end of the day. Pete and Marc had lives and the admin and duties that go with that. I had left all that 3,500 miles away, and Simon lived on his own in a flat in the Projects.
We would always have a final meal out on the last night. And on the final day, we would visit the Met. On one trip there, Toby met us. He and Pete got on really well. At one point, Pete said, “You know I don’t really like Renoir.” I had never really acknowledged this, but once he had said it, we all agreed heartily. Toby and Pete then decided that “Renoir paints like a pervert.” From then on, we’d say, “Let’s meet on the final day to laugh at Renoir.”
Mott from Hester, 2025, Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 51 cm
On one session, Toby came down to meet us with a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s for me to try. Pete was painting next to me and pointed out Little Venice to him. Toby asked how big it was. He answered himself at the same time as Pete, as they both acknowledged it was “probably really little”.
It made such a difference to have friends like that there. I had sacrificed ploughing my own furrow for something really valuable. It meant we could talk about New York, and I enjoyed the city all the more for it. Maybe on my own, I would have had more contact with the passersby and discovered the place by myself. But it was such fun observing, laughing and commenting with each other on the things we saw. Plus the chaps were good at letting us all have our own space. We rarely painted next to each other. They’d come, say hi, shoot the breeze, maybe we’d have a coffee, then they’d bugger off over the way to paint on another corner.
Detritus . . .
Inspired by Maria Mochnacz’s exhibition Foundland (which featured six filing cabinets with ten drawers containing 3,259 catalogued discarded items from our pavements and streets, which I had come across while painting Bristol), I started picking up bits and bobs from places I visit.
This is some of the stuff I collected while painting New York. In case you are interested, I have listed the items below.
- One of my sketchbooks with diary notes and a note to the Sherwin family, who all came to see my show just after it was hung.
- A couple of the cards we had made up (I distributed nearly 2,500 while painting the streets), and the clear envelope the lady on East Broadway gave me to display them
- A drawing of me that someone did during my exhibition talk
- Subway map
- Bowery Day Spa massage price list, which Penny the masseuse gave me
- A strip of the boardwalk from Coney Island
- A receipt from my local supermarket on Flatbush
- A note from Barry, left in the flat when he returned to the UK
- My ESTA (now expired)
- A menu from Simon’s favourite very good value restaurant on Eldridge
- The drawing Fransisc did for me on 86th
- Some Bob Ross mints from Blick – I’d offer them to the lads to help them relax.
- A rubber duck I found on Canal Street early one morning
- A screw I found on 125th St in Harlem, as I discovered the one-line viaduct on my last trip – too late for the show. I told Pete about it. He said, ‘Yes, I did say you should go up there when you were getting knee-deep in Chinatown a year ago.’
- A subway notice
- A chess piece from Chinatown
- A sweet wrapper from the delicious things Simon would offer me when the 4pm sugar low struck
- A couple of TSA ‘notice of inspections’
- My packing list to take to Brooklyn, with a list in pencil of what I was then leaving in Brooklyn
- A piece of the D line, which fell on my head as I was painting 86th St
Looking Back . . .
The exhibition, for me, was remarkable. Johnny had got a space in Chelsea for two weeks at great expense. Josh Smith had made simple, sharp, beautiful frames, and the New York paintings in that huge white space alongside some of my dusty interiors of our Victorian home in Bath looked mint. The response was wonderful from New Yorkers – they landed my favourite line: “You’ve really captured the spirit of New York” – I’ll take that. Students came from The Art Students League of New York, which was wonderful, and people travelled from Carolina, Oregon and Florida… I mean, they may have had other things on their agenda, but…
I loved painting New York. It was energising and exhausting. I left feeling I had only just started a job. At one of the gallery talks, someone asked, “What will you miss most about New York?” I first apologised for being cheesy, then said, “The people – the generosity, the kindness, the willingness to communicate and the ‘who gives a fuck’ attitude.”
But of course, what I’d miss most is trying to capture the place in paint.
I’ll paint some Bath now, some London, some coast, and some interiors, and then I have a job to finish in Glasgow. Maybe when that’s done, I’ll mention to Lisa that transatlantic flights are good value at the moment…
Pete the Street September 2025
- My New York exhibition can still be viewed online.
From Noisy Island, Eldridge and Division, Midday to early Afternoon, March Afternoon, 2025, Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5 cm
