Ready for Boarding

Ready for Boarding began with a photograph taken from a shuttle bus at Manchester Airport during an unexpected journey home. Reimagining a daytime scene after dark, the painting uses reflections, floodlit tarmac and the atmosphere of the airport apron to explore that strange in-between moment when one place has been left behind, but the next hasn't quite been reached.

Ready for Boarding began on a shuttle bus at Manchester Airport, travelling from the terminal towards the aircraft that would take me home to Newquay. I had made a rushed journey to Manchester after my dad had been in hospital. He had been discharged, I was heading home, and somewhere along the way I looked through the window and had one of those immediate thoughts:

That’s a painting.

It was the reflections that caught me first. The original photograph was actually taken during the day, but I could already imagine the scene transformed by darkness. I kept the reflections and reinterpreted the airport beneath floodlights, turning the photograph into a starting point rather than something to reproduce.

The aircraft itself was never really the star. I was more interested in the atmosphere around it, the reflected light, the expanse of tarmac and that peculiar feeling of being temporarily suspended between places.

For me, this particular journey was about going home. For someone else it might be the beginning of a holiday, a work trip or a journey to visit family. Whatever the reason, there is that same moment when you've left one place but haven't yet reached the next.

The title Ready for Boarding came from that familiar airport announcement, the point when waiting becomes movement.

For me, it's a painting about the anticipation of going somewhere, born from a very personal journey home but transformed into a shared experience of departure.

Ready for Boarding
Original painting — coming soon