Just another Bloody Monday

This painting depicts The Whalley Hotel in Whalley Range Manchester at the turn of the century.
I suppose this picture sums up Manchester as most people would like to imagine it to be, they would have been correct up until the early seventies, that’s before manufacturing started to decline and coal started to play second fiddle to gas, then suddenly the sun came out.
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This Pub during the sixties was the meeting place for lots of trendy’s, as well as a hang out for drug dealers and prostitutes, the whole spectrum of Manchester life could be viewed at the Whalley, the atmosphere was amazing, and you felt part of the place.
The reason I chose this particular era is because this was the heyday of Whalley Range, large residential houses owned by the well healed from the city dominated the area, with the Whalley Hotel standing proud in the middle.
The painting depicts a typically gruesome Manchester Monday morning, drizzle, coal generated fog that you can literally taste and a cold damp that chills you to the bone.
The so called superior patrons of the hotel are bathed in a warm light as they enjoy their breakfast, if they were to just glance outside they would see the constant stream of mainly hungry downtrodden workers filing past on their way to face yet another gruelling twelve to eighteen hours of work.
The painting was entered into the Laing exhibition organised by Manchester Evening News and won the converted guest choice award.
The painting is acrylic on board, mostly brush painted but with airbrush highlights and atmospheric fog.