Layered Reflection - G20 Tenement Streets

​Structured, Large-scale drawings with written words.

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Created for the G20 Artist Collective’s 2025 project Tenement Streets, this triptych drawing is a personal and place-based exploration of the lives lived within Glasgow’s G20 tenements.

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Based on the iconic tenements, the work unfolds across three panels, each delving into home, memory, and urban ecology themes. Using charcoal, ink, and marker, I’ve built layered lines and textures that reflect this area's rich, overlapping histories, not just its physical form, but the stories it quietly contains.

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This piece is intentionally more gestural and sketch-like than my usual refined landscape work, often seen in gallery settings. Rather than polished precision, I wanted to capture a sense of immediacy and intuition, drawing from life, to reflect that present lived experience, along with memory, are textured, incomplete, and evolving. The looseness of line and layering of materials mirror the complexity of tenement life: impressions forming, fading, and reappearing like conversations in a stairwell.

I’ve drawn visual inspiration from the architecture itself, particularly the iconic close tiles found throughout Glasgow tenements. Their patterns and vivid, retro colours, worn but still vibrant, are embedded in the piece. I’ve also included elements of the original stained glass that I’ve long admired — their coloured light and swooping swallows act as a subtle visual language of return and familiarity.

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The surrounding green spaces of the G20 — the Kelvin River, the canal, Children’s Wood, Happy Park, Botanic Gardens, and Kelvingrove Park — also weave through the drawings. They serve as natural counterpoints to the built environment, suggesting breath and flow within the framework of stone and city.