Beginning at his home in South East London, Maltman walks up and down Sydenham Hill each day before returning to his annex studio for a day’s painting. He pauses at the top – a vantage point from which the view stretches across East London, from the City to the Docklands.
These paintings take this familiar skyline, presided over by the Shard’s imposing presence, as the starting point for a meditation on painting as a form of recall. Layering image and text, Maltman seeks to capture the sensation of the view, changing moment by moment with the light and weather. What emerges is an ongoing record that marries the general and the specific: a skyline visible from hundreds of points around the city, perceived and recreated again from the artist’s unique painterly perspective.