Going to the Tranmere Match (oil, 2024).

An entry to a painting competition run by my club Tranmere Rovers on the theme of going to a match in the style of L.S. Lowry. This was to recognise the visit of Lowry's famous painting 'Going to the Match’ to the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead in spring 2024.

Lowry commonly used a thick straight-out-of-the-tube impasto naive style and only used five colours: Lead white, Ivory black, Vermillion, Prussian blue and Yellow Ochre, which is all I've restricted myself to here, from the same manufacturer except vermillion which is hard to find now. He also 'aged' his paintings using various techniques which I've tried to mimic by use of ‘crackle paste' which dries with fine cracks. The original ‘Going to the match’ is more smooth in texture, but my version pulls in a range of Lowry’s styles.

Football grounds are obviously a lot larger scale than when Lowry painted 'Going to the match' (Bolton Wanderer's Burnden Park in the 1950s) so composition was a challenge here. The smaller stands at Prenton Park would have been more typical of that era. As this was created for a competition run by the club I wanted to showcase the stadium well, so this is how I like to think Lowry might have approached the subject today. To show off the ground I needed a perspective with the buildings positioned diagonally, whereas most commonly Lowry painted buildings flat on. However he regularly painted this perspective too so nothing out of character. He often composed his scenes looking down from a high angle, which I’ve done here too which gives a less commonly seen view of the stadium.

The old man raising his walking cane in the lower left is a light reference to an incident in 1979 when a pensioner ran onto the pitch to beat a time-wasting Bournemouth goalkeeper with his walking stick. The mid foreground includes characters copied from Lowry's original ‘Going to the match’ painting to help tie the link between the two. The characters’ clothing is not particularly contemporary with the age of this stadium which was in line with Lowry too, with characters and clothing more typical of the 1930s than 1950s. But was essential to maintain this look for that Lowry-inspired feel.

Available to buy at the Tranmere Rovers online store