Now Showing

Inspired by Newquay's distinctive Lighthouse cinema, the painting explores that moment of arrival — illuminated signs and entrances ahead, people gathering outside and the anticipation of stepping out of the everyday world for a couple of hours.

I'd wanted to include a cinema in The Colour of Night for some time. There is something about cinemas that naturally belongs in a collection exploring artificial light after dark, illuminated signs, glowing entrances and people being drawn towards them from the surrounding night.

I don't actually visit the cinema particularly often, although it has become something of a Christmas tradition for me to go there for live screenings of ballet or André Rieu. What interested me more was the wider ritual of going to the cinema, arriving after dark, meeting outside and knowing that you're about to disappear into another world for a couple of hours.

Finding the composition took a little longer. I photographed the building both during the day and at night and tried several viewpoints before finding the angle I wanted.

The illuminated building was always going to be the focus, but from this particular viewpoint I also loved the zigzag road markings in the foreground. They create a strong route through the painting, leading the eye across the road and towards the lights of the cinema.

I added the figures gathering near the entrance to strengthen that sense of arrival. They're not intended to be particular people; they're simply part of the familiar pattern of an evening at the cinema, people approaching, meeting and heading inside.

Ultimately, Now Showing isn't really a painting about a cinema building. It's about going to the cinema, that small, familiar ritual of leaving the night outside and stepping into a story.