The Colour Of Memory

On the eve of PATRICK CULLEN’S 70th birthday, STEVE PILL joins the New English Art Club member during a studio clear out as he reflects on his work and the challenges that lie ahead.

It’s a grey day in north London when Patrick Cullen opens the studio door, his bright welcome a contrast to the ominous clouds above. His two-storey workspace opens out onto a quaint cobbled mews in a desirable corner of the city, but no one is lingering long outside today.

Inside, the ground floor space is packed floor to ceiling with more paintings than you’d find in a whole wing of the National Gallery. Plan chests heave with drawers full of unseen works on paper, painted canvases hang limply awaiting stretcher bars and a dozen or more larger framed works lean against the wooden staircase to the floor above. Everywhere you look there are repurposed picture frames, mounted drawings and flight cases from his painting trips abroad. Several self-portraits, painted decades apart, peer out amid all the clutter.

Upstairs the wealth of great art continues with a masterpiece of an Indian street scene casually propped at the top of the stairs, while thin picture shelves lining the far wall are stacked up with smaller landscapes. A lone new drawing sits on an easel, more of which later.

While Patrick often has multiple paintings on the go and plenty of work lying around, the extra visible clutter is the result of a late spring clean ahead of a two-day studio sale. The studio floor has been freshly repainted white for the occasion, even if the colour looks more Payne’s Grey in the overcast light. Extra wall space will be commandeered from the next-door yoga studio as the artist intends to put out “probably a couple of hundred” pieces, mostly unseen drawings and unsold works from previous shows.