shifting landscapes avatar

moving through a

Shifting Landscape

Visual Art & Photography

via Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand

The Painted City

Abstract colour street photograph with a vivid chrome-yellow band sweeping from the foreground towards the centre. Blurred road lines, repeated fragments of “NOT IN SERVICE”, dark buildings and a yellow-orange façade stretch through the city scene.
Not In Service (Chrome Yellow)

The Painted City is a series of colour and black-and-white photographs made in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland with a mobile phone. Streets, buildings, figures, trees, scaffolding, road markings, signage, machinery and weather are drawn into bands of colour, broken structure, blurred bodies and shifting urban surfaces.

The photographs remain rooted in the city, but movement and accumulated colour loosen them from fixed description. Some works carry a visual echo of thick impasto and gestural painting; others move closer to drawing, tonal studies, colour wash or impressionistic light. Across the series, ordinary urban material becomes less stable and more physical, as built space, green space and passing figures are caught in the act of change.

Made in camera through movement and timing while walking repeated routes, the images carry bodily shifts, changing weather and interrupted sightlines. Colour gathers from signage, road markings, street lighting, machinery, scaffolding and sky, becoming less a description of place than a residue of movement through it.

  • Abstract colour street photograph with a dark scaffold-like mass dominating the left and a shadowed retaining wall on the right. Pale grey, blue and Naples yellow sky and cloud blur into an impasto-like painted surface.
    Scaffold (Naples Yellow)
  • Abstract colour street photograph with a pale grey-white smoke-like field above a dark black-blue lower band and a brick-red strip along the left edge. Faint vertical traces suggest blurred urban structures, but most street detail has dissolved into a soft, atmospheric image.
    Smoke Cloud (Brick Red & Black)
  • Abstract colour street photograph with rose-madder, pink, violet and blue signage pulled into broad circular swirls. Fragmented lettering and graphic forms gather on the right beside a dark vertical structure, while pale grey sky opens on the left.
    Swirling (Rose Madder)
  • Abstract colour street photograph with a broken emerald-green band running across blurred roadside and building forms. Pale grey cloud fills the sky, while the foreground dissolves into dark violet-brown road and sweeping motion.
    Broken Horizon (Emerald Green)

  • Abstract colour street photograph of a pale concrete mixer truck blurred across a dark Vandyke brown streetscape. Orange cones and worksite marks line the lower edge, while scattered lights streak across shadowed architectural surfaces above.
    Mixer (Vandyke Brown)

  • Abstract colour street photograph with blurred blocks of cream, ochre, grey, brown and muted red across signs, fencing and buildings. Dark repeated horizontal marks cover the foreground, with fragments of lettering and mesh still faintly visible.
    Palette (Earths & Ochres)

  • Abstract colour street photograph of an orange road sign, traffic cones and temporary barriers beside a long blue construction wall. Camera movement blurs the roadway, sky and surrounding vegetation into soft streaked fields.
    Sign (Orange & Blue)

  • Black-and-white blurred city photograph of large office buildings, construction cranes and streetlights stretched into charcoal-grey lines beneath a pale sky. Several small pedestrians cross the street along the lower edge.
    City Block (Charcoal Grey)
  • Vertical colour photograph of a solitary figure in blue walking along a sunlit pavement. Intentional camera movement blurs the person and surroundings into vertical streaks, with long blue-grey shadows extending towards the foreground.
    Blue Walker
  • Black-and-white blurred photograph of a large building under construction, with exposed floors, columns and diagonal bracing forming a dense charcoal-grey framework against a pale sky.
    Constructed Space (Charcoal Grey)
  • Abstract colour photograph inside a main train station, with blurred pedestrians crossing an ochre-textured floor beneath looping white, silver, turquoise and red light trails. Pale structural forms and fragmented signage gather through the dark interior.
    Light Rail (Metallic & Ochre)

  • Black-and-white blurred urban photograph with a pale path running into the distance between dark bands. A pair of dark, pyramid-like blocks on the pavement suggest figures, while buildings dissolve into soft grey motion.
    Ghost World (Charcoal Grey)
  • Abstract colour street photograph looking through a dark city corridor towards a bright sky. Ultra-violet, blue and pink signs glow on both sides, with blurred ANZ lettering, red lights, pale vehicles and yellow road markings below.
    ANZ (Ultra Violet)

  • Abstract colour street photograph of a crowded city scene with blurred pedestrians, floating yellow lights and layered text. Pale lilac, blue, cream and white tones dominate, turning the busy street into a soft pastel haze.
    Lilac Street (Pastel Shades)
  • Black-and-white blurred street scene with a tall tower block in the centre background, dark buildings on both sides, shadowy figures in the middle distance and a pale strip of pavement leading towards them.
    Tower Block (Charcoal Grey)

  • Abstract colour street photograph of a dark tree trunk and blue-green canopy against a blurred turquoise and pale yellow background, with deep blue-black ground and faint road markings below.
    Shade Tree II (Turquoise & Yellow Ochre)

  • Abstract colour photograph with a vast mauve-grey overcast sky above blurred pale building forms. A deep lamp-black foreground fills the lower half, holding a faint orange glow that becomes stronger near the bottom edge.
    Overcast (Lamp Black)

• ICM •