Pick of the week

How good to have something to celebrate in these times. A cityscape reduced to ruins does not necessarily mean misery and massacre. It may perhaps signify progress of a sort. In any event, it is particularly good to see an artist recording such changes, unemotionally and without making any political points.

Helen Clapcott (b. 1953) was brought up in Stockport, Greater Manchester, from the age of 10 and, after the Royal College of Art and time in London, she returned to live in Macclesfield and paint the post-industrial landscapes. The town she grew up in is obliterating its heritage of cotton mills and hat factories to replace them with concrete, major roads and retail parks. She records what she sees in pencil and watercolour, then produces large oil or egg tempera paintings. Like the Pre-raphaelites, she paints directly onto gesso panels, which gives a shimmery translucency. Tempera is particularly suitable for even larger-scale reproduction.

As the critic Andrew Lambirth has written: ‘If Lowry first opened our eyes to the beauties of the industrial scene, Clapcott is chronicling its last chapter: the decline and fall of a great cityscape, bathed in pellucid light.’ She is marking its passing by hiring three billboards for a month to display her record of this time of transition. Her work will be a reminder to Stockport’s citizens of what has gone.