Shaw thing

George Shaw was born in 1966 in the Tile Hill district of Coventry, which continues to be the subject of a remarkable series of paintings.

Shaw paints on board, using old-fashioned Humbrol enamel paints, creating a surface of rich luminosity that, in my view, is impossible to reproduce faithfully on paper or on screen.

I discovered Shaw by accident when I dropped in at Birmingham's Ikon Gallery some years ago and discovered a major exhibition of his work. Big impact.

The images seem bathed in light and, always devoid of human figures, seem to invite us to view these very 'ordinary' council-estate scenes with fresh eyes.

Rather like the painter Jeremy Duncan, Shaw seems eager to turn aside from subjects that are traditionally associated with landscape painting: the seashore, the mountains, the garden, the country estate.

And in so doing, he challenges us to look again, to question our definitions of 'beautiful' and, perhaps, to extend our understanding of the sacred...

Greene Street 2, New York City

An unremarkable street at the rougher end of the city. A boarded-up doorway. Some random graffiti. Not much here for the artist or the poet?

Fortunately, artist Jeremy Duncan's eye doesn't work like that.

He pauses and invites us to share a moment of stillness and strange, unexpected harmony.

Awareness of urban grunge subsides as morning sunlight picks out the elegant classical column, a remnant of the street's former dignity.

Its jagged shadow draws the eye to the delicate blue of the boarding, and then to the doorway, with its single window, the focus of the picture: intriguing and mysterious.

Suddenly, a scene of utter ordinariness becomes extraordinary as light, silence and stillness reveal its 'hidden' beauty.

For me, the picture speaks powerfully of the 'holiness' of the everyday, human world: damaged and fragile, but also resilient, graceful, enduring. And always worth a second look, a second chance.

In short, the picture is a sort of everyday epiphany.

You can see more of Jeremy Duncan's work via the dealer Waterhouse and Dodd.

You can buy prints via EasyArt.