{"id":344516,"date":"2025-08-14T18:28:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T18:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344516\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T18:28:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T18:28:16","slug":"its-done-me-well-joe-scarborough-on-a-lifetime-painting-sheffield-and-its-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344516\/","title":{"rendered":"“It\u2019s done me well” \u2013 Joe Scarborough on a lifetime painting Sheffield and its people"},"content":{"rendered":"

14 August 2025<\/p>\n

Joe Food<\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Joe Scarborough<\/p>\n

Between now and the middle of September, head up the stairs at the Showroom Workstation and you\u2019ll arrive in a room decked out in Sheffield \u2013 its streets, pubs, workplaces and characters \u2013 all captured in oil and watercolour by one of the city\u2019s most cherished artists. Then & Now gathers together nearly 60 years of Joe Scarborough\u2019s work, from early maritime experiments to the bustling, story-packed cityscapes that made his name.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Joe Scarborough is in what he calls \u201csemi-retirement\u201d, 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 \u2013 a glint in the eye and brimming with tales ranging from sit-downs with Lowry (\u201cwe didn\u2019t discuss art techniques \u2013 he just told me to get a good accountant!\u201d) to his early seafaring aspirations (\u201cI wanted to be Sheffield\u2019s greatest maritime painter! We\u2019re 90 minutes from the sea, so I thought, \u2018Surely everyone wants a ship in their house? \u2026 Big mistake!\u2019\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"\"Joe Scarborough portrait<\/p>\n

Once he realised nautical scenes could be a tough sell, the ships soon gave way to tram stops, back streets, working men\u2019s clubs and factories \u2013 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 \u2013 a heated boxing match in the middle, gleeful couples navigating the dodgems nearby, a shifty-looking character in a long overcoat, the crowd\u2019s varied expressions throughout. He often disrupts visual balance on purpose, just enough to make the eye linger. \u201cIf you upset it by putting too much on one side, it makes you look twice,\u201d he explains. \u201cYou then have your audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we stand before a mural of 1960s Sheffield crowded with figures edging around double-decker trams, he points out how his characters don\u2019t shrink with distance. \u201cAt the end of that 100 yards, people apparently are smaller. No, they\u2019re not \u2013 they\u2019re still six foot tall. Don\u2019t paint them the same size.\u201d It\u2019s a rule that gives his pictures their busy, flattened depth, where everyone matters equally no matter where they stand.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Corner Caf\u00e9 on St. Mary\u2019s Road\u2019 original oil painting by Joe Scarborough<\/p>\n

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 \u201cgreen light, green velvet \u2013 even the colours of the buildings stood out\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

The exhibition also showcases his more recent experiments with watercolour, a medium he found unexpectedly difficult. Oils, he says, allow you to \u201croll into it\u201d and make changes easily. Watercolour demands precision from the first brushstroke \u2013 \u201cno faffing about\u201d \u2013 and mistakes mean scrapping the paper entirely.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018The Phantom of the Opera\u2019 original oil painting by Joe Scarborough<\/p>\n

Fitting to the exhibition\u2019s location, cinemas feature heavily in his paintings, a nod to his time working as a doorman, complete with what he fondly calls \u201ca corker\u201d of a uniform. Elsewhere, tiled pubs like The Ship are rendered in careful detail, preserving buildings that might otherwise slip from memory.<\/p>\n

Sheffield\u2019s working life is everywhere in his art \u2013 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\u2019re \u201cdoing what you\u2019re supposed to do\u201d, 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\u2019s returned to many times.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Farewell My Love\u2019 original oil painting by Joe Scarborough<\/p>\n

As we finish our walk, Joe glances around the room, decades of his career hanging side by side. \u201cIt\u2019s done me well,\u201d he says with a proud smile, and I get the impression this refers to more than just a career in painting \u2013 he\u2019s nodding to the city and the local characters that have always been both his subject and his audience.<\/p>\n

Then & Now is at Showroom Workstation until 19 Sept, open to the public Mon-Fri, 9-5.30pm. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"14 August 2025 Joe Food Photo Credit: Joe Scarborough Between now and the middle of September, head up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[2606,748,393,4884,122341,1620,122342,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-344516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-painter","13":"tag-sheffield","14":"tag-sheffield-artist","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115028539149104174","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}