Oil Painting: Guangzhou (Canton)

There is a large European quarter in Canton, south China focussed around Shamian Island. This was divided into concessions and given to the French and British, who promptly started transforming the island into a mini London/Paris as was their wont in those days. Walking around it is slightly surreal as it's all so familiar even though I was thousands of miles from home.

I'm not sure if the subject of my painting is a French or British building. It doesn't really matter, I just wanted to make it into a ghostly monument to imperialism, a relic of a different age. As world power shifts to the east it is becoming an even more peculiar feature on the Chinese mainland.

I wanted to give the clock tower a ghostly quality so I lit it in a spooky white light and tried to keep detail to a minimum.

I used a bit of artistic licence with the street light which was actually much bigger but I wanted to make the colonial building the focus. The finishing touch was the red of the Chinese flag atop the clock tower, a foreign building reclaimed by the world's new superpower.