Last summer, during the Olympics, the painter Leon Kossoff found himself back in the East End of London, in Arnold Circus in Shoreditch. “It was a miracle,” he says – and then with typical self-effacement takes the word back. “No: that’s an exaggeration. Anyway, it was the summer of the Olympics. There wasn’t much traffic. I didn’t approve of how they changed things, to build the park, but I did enjoy it. Everything seemed different, people seemed happy … Returning to Arnold Circus wasn’t something I anticipated. I just went down there one day and I had to draw it.”
He made drawing after drawing of the pinkish red-brick buildings (Britain’s first housing estate, built in the 1890s) that surround the little park in the circus, with its bandstand at the centre. Summer trees jostle against a hot blue sky. In the distance, the tower of Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, Spitalfields
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/apr/27/leon-kossoff-love-affair-london