Estonia Street Scene Painting

Memories and emotions of a time past…. I visited Estonia on a work exchange in the summer of 2005: and whilst there I realised that I wanted to document the faces of local people that I passed in the street each day, to depict their expressions of struggle and response to me as an outsider, a ‘tourist’ looking in. Their wrinkled and tension-filled faces intrigued me. I felt that I was almost able to look into their characters, ignoring all their flaws. Through my painting and the photos I took during my visit I have tried to recapture the way I responded to them and the emotions I sensed they were feeling at the time. Snapshot photography captured time and tension, suspense and atmosphere. It has fed and focused my memories of specific situations and details. I felt that by painting the scene I could relive the time and give physical form to my experience.