K.M.B., 2007-2008

Jock McFadyen RA (b. 1950)

RA Collection: Art

The horizontal bands of sky and street give a cinematic feel to McFadyen's work, as if it was an image glimpsed from a moving car or train, emphasising the essential transiency of the scene.

McFadyen has lived and worked in the East End of London for over 30 years since graduating from Chelsea School of Art in 1977. He captures with carefully observed realism the constant flux of the city through the traces its inhabitants leave behind on its fabric, its bleak streets and decaying buildings. Although themselves no longer present, their daily lives are registered in layer upon layer of marks, both deliberately left by means of painted graffiti (analogous to the artist’s own procedures) and in the involuntary signs of wear and decay that betray their own passing and that of time itself.