Star date: 26th July 2020

TRANQUILITY FROM ORDSALL TO OLD TRAFFORD

"They were such lovely days..." David Lowther

Salford born artist, David Lowther, made the most of the lockdown, walking for an hour in every direction from his Ordsall home and sketching the empty tranquil scenes just beyond his neighbourhood. The results are stunning, hazy, almost surreal images which capture urban beauty at its deserted finest.

Full details here...

It's been commented on a zillion times; how everything took on a kind of magical quality during the lockdown – with no traffic, no hustle, no bustle...no people. There were birds singing louder, grass turning greener and everyone's world shrank back to the doorstep, for better or for worse...

Meanwhile, out there, the urban concrete jungle froze for a few months, almost stunned by a spell from some weird fairy tale. And this strange tranquil haze that enveloped Salford has been captured in colour sketches and drawings by artist David Lowther, who made the most of the lockdown, turning familiar sites into quasi-surreal images that could illustrate the tale of the COVID-ridden city...

"My partner lives in the Peak District and I was determined not to go stir crazy, as I was in the middle of Ordsall" David recalls "The place took on this beauty because they weren't cutting the grass in the park so it was like a meadow. Everything was suddenly green with flowers everywhere and so I took advantage of that.

"My response to coronavirus was to go out and draw, sticking to the rules and doing one hour a day in as many directions as I could think of" adds the artist who is part of the Manchester Urban Sketchers and has exhibited everywhere from Salford Museum and Art Gallery, to Stockport Art Gallery, to smaller venues like Deli Lama cafe bar on Bexley Square...

"I walked around the Quays and Old Trafford...all sorts of places, which was really good because there was no-one about" he explains "A lot of my work doesn't have people in anyway, so this was perfect as there was nobody there."

Blue-tinged sketches of eerie towerblock cranes on Chapel Street, stagnant potion-like canals, and an enchanted Media City coming on like Sleeping Beauty's captive castle make for mesmerizing cityscapes that lure the usually ugly into new dimensions.

"They were such lovely days with no pollution and my first instinct was to do it in colour" says David "For a long time I just did black and white and it could look very foreboding, like it made Media City look like a thoroughly evil place sometimes. But now everything was vibrant and in colour. And I had time, without people stopping me asking me what I was doing."

These are not the usual photo-like Salford scenes; these are unique stunning reflections of a unique time in the city's history, and hopefully they will be exhibited, somehow, somewhere...

"They don't fall into the category of being a heavy coronavirus response because it's not" David insists "It's just a sketchbook of drawings around Salford. This is what I do; go out around Salford...and parts of it are really beautiful...."

Follow David Lowther's work on Facebook (click here), Twitter and Instagram under the David Lowther Artist title