14 August 2025

Joe Food

Photo Credit: Joe Scarborough

Between now and the middle of September, head up the stairs at the Showroom Workstation and you’ll arrive in a room decked out in Sheffield – its streets, pubs, workplaces and characters – all captured in oil and watercolour by one of the city’s most cherished artists. Then & Now gathers together nearly 60 years of Joe Scarborough’s work, from early maritime experiments to the bustling, story-packed cityscapes that made his name.

Joe Scarborough is in what he calls “semi-retirement”, though the energy with which he takes me from canvas to canvas suggests no waning enthusiasm for his work. Each piece is both a story and a stage, and as we move through the room he is tour guide and raconteur – a glint in the eye and brimming with tales ranging from sit-downs with Lowry (“we didn’t discuss art techniques – he just told me to get a good accountant!”) to his early seafaring aspirations (“I wanted to be Sheffield’s greatest maritime painter! We’re 90 minutes from the sea, so I thought, ‘Surely everyone wants a ship in their house? … Big mistake!’”).

Joe Scarborough portrait

Once he realised nautical scenes could be a tough sell, the ships soon gave way to tram stops, back streets, working men’s clubs and factories – scenes that resonated instantly with local people and have continued to do so for decades. In Then & Now there are residential backdrops in Crookes that, if you took away the multitude of flat caps, look much the same today, and paintings of bustling travelling fairs that reveal new subplots each time you revisit them – a heated boxing match in the middle, gleeful couples navigating the dodgems nearby, a shifty-looking character in a long overcoat, the crowd’s varied expressions throughout. He often disrupts visual balance on purpose, just enough to make the eye linger. “If you upset it by putting too much on one side, it makes you look twice,” he explains. “You then have your audience.”

As we stand before a mural of 1960s Sheffield crowded with figures edging around double-decker trams, he points out how his characters don’t shrink with distance. “At the end of that 100 yards, people apparently are smaller. No, they’re not – they’re still six foot tall. Don’t paint them the same size.” It’s a rule that gives his pictures their busy, flattened depth, where everyone matters equally no matter where they stand.

‘Corner Café on St. Mary’s Road’ original oil painting by Joe Scarborough

Joe was born in Pitsmoor and went to Pye Bank School, a fortress-like building high in S3 in a city known at the time rife with strikes and riots. His early working life included almost six years down the pit at Thorpe Hesley Colliery, an experience that left him with an acute awareness of colour. Emerging from the dark into daylight, he remembers the grass not as green but as “green light, green velvet – even the colours of the buildings stood out”. That vividness would later become a hallmark of his work, especially the reds that his old teacher would often berate him for using far too liberally.

The exhibition also showcases his more recent experiments with watercolour, a medium he found unexpectedly difficult. Oils, he says, allow you to “roll into it” and make changes easily. Watercolour demands precision from the first brushstroke – “no faffing about” – and mistakes mean scrapping the paper entirely.

‘The Phantom of the Opera’ original oil painting by Joe Scarborough

Fitting to the exhibition’s location, cinemas feature heavily in his paintings, a nod to his time working as a doorman, complete with what he fondly calls “a corker” of a uniform. Elsewhere, tiled pubs like The Ship are rendered in careful detail, preserving buildings that might otherwise slip from memory.

Sheffield’s working life is everywhere in his art – from shop floors to the bustle of town on a Friday. Joe delights in depicting people going to and from their shifts. To him, that movement is a sign they’re “doing what you’re supposed to do”, with weekends reserved for play. He recalls watching factory girls arm-in-arm walking up and down West Street after work, a simple image he’s returned to many times.

‘Farewell My Love’ original oil painting by Joe Scarborough

As we finish our walk, Joe glances around the room, decades of his career hanging side by side. “It’s done me well,” he says with a proud smile, and I get the impression this refers to more than just a career in painting – he’s nodding to the city and the local characters that have always been both his subject and his audience.

Then & Now is at Showroom Workstation until 19 Sept, open to the public Mon-Fri, 9-5.30pm.