Ral's 1983

Robert Cottingham made this painting, Ral’s, by looking really closely at the world. He’s picked out a fragment of the urban landscape and, through the layering of line and colour, has made something totally new. I love how Cottingham isn’t afraid to show you his working, the paint is thick and expressive, with a quality that’s almost sculptural. He’s given us a real feel for the textures and surfaces of the city: the worn brick, the flickering neon, and that amazing metalwork above ‘Horse’. Look at the way the red and white paint of the Ral’s sign sits on the surface - it’s like he’s building the image from the ground up. For me, this kind of building, this process of layering and construction is a big part of what painting is about. Think about someone like Richard Estes, and how he might approach the same subject matter. But where Estes goes for a kind of hyper-realism, Cottingham seems more interested in the act of painting itself. You know, it's not about perfection, it's about embracing the mess.