An artist whose painting of a petrol station under a starry night sky prompted the business’s owners to buy it has completed a commission to paint a second forecourt – after its proprietor read about it in Forecourt Trader.
Diane Griffiths’ original piece, completed last year, was inspired by a journey she and her partner made past Mark and Tina Main’s Texaco site on the edge of Newquay in Cornwall. Their son Jack found out about the painting and purchased it as a gift for his father.
Now, after reading the story in Forecourt Trader in December, retailer Andrew Hindmarch, who runs a Gulf site with a Spar shop in Stamford, Lincolnshire, with his wife Diane, contacted Griffiths to ask if she could paint his petrol station too.
Lincolnshire was too far for Cornwall-based Griffiths to travel, so she got to work late last year, working from photographs sent by Hindmarch, as well as Google Street View images.
“Andrew reached out pretty quickly after the Texaco garage article was published,” says Griffiths who deployed some creative license, needing to change the position of a lamp post, which would have been in the middle of the painting if it had been depicted true to life.
“A couple of the daytime photos captured my imagination from a compositional point of view.,” she adds. ”As a slightly different set-up to the Texaco garage I knew I had more buildings to include in this painting, but it was the silhouettes of the trees to the right of the garage as you look at it which caught my attention and solidified my composition. Using the rest of the photos and Google Street level view I was able to fill in some gaps, and the night photos really helped me to understand the light sources,” she explains.
“After sending over some photos from different angles and times of the day, and an email exchange, another garage painting at night was born!”
Hindmarch, who has owned the forecourt for the past 35 years, is delighted with the result. He said that he plans to display the artwork, which cost him £400, in one of his offices. “I don’t think my wife will let me have it at home, despite the artist having done a lovely job,” he laughs.
“I really liked what she had done with the other painting and thought it would be a nice thing for us to have as well.”
Griffiths had never thought that she would become known and find a passion as a painter of petrol stations. “It’s certainly an unexpected direction. But petrol stations are quite interesting to paint because there is so much light coming from them,” she says.
“I really enjoyed painting this commission. I wasn’t sure I could re-create the magic again, but I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out.”
