THE COLOUR OF MEMORY
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 work space 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
