Past and present... looking at East Street Chichester this week, I wondered what had changed in the last 43 years since Nigel painted his first Chichester street scene. Just looking at the first two shops either side of East Street: Superdrug still in business, only a slight 'face lift' to their shop front typography, amazing...probably one of the few shops in this part of East Street that is still trading 43 years later! On the opposite side of the street a very different story, the Clintons we see now was once the traditional 'Acres the Bakers' where I seem to remember as a child getting the very calorific but delicious 'lardy cake'. But more telling than shops or buildings is the very large tree that now obscures the view point Nigel enjoyed as he took his first photographs for the painting. At the time Nigel was taking his source photos there was one other major difference, pedestrianisation of the street had just been introduced (see the road markings in this photo taken by Nigel in the mid 1970s). East Street seems such a familiar place to me as I walk up the street but art returns to mind the ever changing elements of a City. A City is so much more than its buildings; try taking a moment wherever you are to imagine the streets over the years, all the people with their stories who walked where you stand today. The East Street of Nigel Purchase is full of such people, characters who made the City the place it was at that time.
