#56: The Light in Suburbia

The Light in Suburbia: a Year of Lockdown Paintings by Ian Archie Beck

A man I once knew used to enjoy strolling around neighbouring streets on Sunday mornings, looking at houses with their front gardens, front doors with stained glass inserts, hanging baskets, paths. Not in an intrusive way, but rather enjoying the homeliness and even beauty of them. I used to accompany him, slightly mystified at what could be so interesting.

These suburban streets are the world Ian Beck conjures in The Light in Suburbia: A Year of Lockdown Paintings, a book of watercolour and crayon pictures. The shadow of trees thrown on the white curved walls of a 1930s art deco style house; the corner of a garden shed with a trees flowing up next to its corrugated iron roof; a lemonade jug next to a window in spring, its static floral patterns providing an accompaniment to the glancing shadows of leaves behind it.

Observing light

The book is divided into the four seasons and works best for me leafed through chronologically, so the places and objects recur in different lights, just as the objects and buildings around us do through the year. So the lemonade jug in spring appears again in autumn, larger and with darker, more sharply defined patterns.

In the preface Beck describes how the pictures in the book arose from lockdown. Confined to his local area in Isleworth, he used to wander the streets early each morning and observe how the light struck objects. For example, on one trip he notices 'a group of mature trees planted at the corner of a junction of two crossing streets. The trees had been planted by the enlightened local authority at the same time that the houses were built, sometime in the 1920s. I was struck by the warm colour that the light gave to the trunks and branches. There was a haze effect made by the fresh leaf buds and there was an almost golden light beyond in the distance'.

Lockdown proved, says Beck, that he could take a break from illustrating books and 'might just paint for myself, something I had done very little of since the heady days of art college in the 1960s'. Not having to paint to a narrative, he said, proved refreshing.

Isleworth winter evening © Ian Archie Beck

A quieter lockdown story

This is part of the quieter lockdown story then, not the story of vaccines, restrictions and financial emergency but the smaller things that people discovered through reacquainting themselves with their localities. It is a world where many learned to appreciate their neighbourhoods anew, start different projects and even make new friends. Since pets were important for so many during lockdown, I was particularly pleased to learn that Beck was made to discover a new area by his greyhound Gracie, who one day pulled him in a different direction to his usual walk.

Perhaps pictures, rather than words, are the best medium for expressing this quiet break from the narrative of catastrophe in order to take pleasure in the shadows of trees on the backs of houses, or a buddleia bush bursting into an alleyway or marble busts in sunlight.

The Light in Suburbia is available from Unbound.

Alleyway beside Pitt Park © Ian Archie Beck