CORNERS by Doreen Fletcherat Town House, Spitalfields (Exhibition Review)
13 June-5 July 2026
When several years ago I wrote a review of this artist’s work her paintings seemed unique, carefully recording the fading-away of a London that was gradually being replaced by characterless boxes of little architectural merit. Since that time Doreen Fletcher has continued to seek out new areas of the city to paint, and some weeks ago I received an e-mail inviting me to visit her new exhibition at Town House in Spitalfields and meet her for the first time. What follows is a review of the show, a brief account of our meeting, and an exploration of the part that Town House plays within the community in which it thrives.
We met at Town House and settled into a seat surrounded by her pictures. Both of us were a little nervous and Doreen startled me when she revealed with a smile that she had researched me and discovered that only seventeen days separate our birthdays! We chatted amicably for a while, and when asked how long it had taken her to complete the paintings on display, she said that they represented two years’ work. I had always suspected that Edward Hopper must have been a key influence on her but when asked, she explained that she enjoyed his art when she was much younger but that it does not really reflect her interests now. We did, however, agree on the recent Courtauld show Seurat and the Sea’s breathtakingly beautiful paintings by an artist who, she remarked, has indeed influenced her work, such as the depiction of the snow in Capel Moon. During our meeting another lady arrived with her mother and instantly recognised Doreen, from whom she had purchased a painting some years ago. She commented on the pleasure that she, her husband and her mother derive from the picture every day. The pair were obviously delighted to see the exhibition and it was lovely to see their appreciation of Doreen’s work. It must be very satisfying for an artist who works so hard and has given everything to her art to reap these kinds of rewards.
Town House is a small, intimate space situated between two iconic buildings: Spitalfields Market, which seems to be thriving once again, and the Hawksmoor-designed Christ Church Spitalfields. Fournier Street, where it is situated, is an old Huguenot street where the French silk weavers set up their workshops in the early eighteenth century. Unlike much of the East End the street survived the Second World War virtually intact, and wooden shutters still adorn the fronts of several buildings. The area has strong connections with London history, some of it disturbing: many of Jack the Ripper’s crimes were committed in Spitalfields, and nearby Brick Lane was the scene of the seismic 1978 protests which followed the murder of a young Bangladeshi student.
Arriving at the house, one is first struck by how inviting it looks. It has the feel of an old antiques shop but it sells modern ceramics as well as books, jewellery, and all sorts of other items, most of which have been sourced from within the local community. When these buildings were constructed in the early eighteenth century they followed a common pattern: the front door opens onto a main display area, where the finished silks were shown to customers, and this is the part of the house in which the shop is situated.
Fiona Atkins has run Town House since 2002. The first art exhibition was held there in 2013 and since then many artists have shown their work there: these include Eleanor Crow (of Shopfronts of London fame), Marc Gooderham, Chris Thompson, and Nicholas Borden. Town House continues to encourage local artists, and more shows are planned for the future. Doreen Fletcher had her first exhibition here in 2016, and it was that show’s success which led to her present popularity. She is clearly a welcome guest: her paintings are hung in a small room behind the main sales area, an intimate space entirely appropriate to her new work. This was the first time that I had seen her works displayed together, and they make a curiously satisfying group. Each one catches a particular mood or moment in time and seems to ask a question of the viewer.
One example, The Yellow House, reminded me of the Stella Gibbons novel The Yellow Houses, although I suspect that this was not intentional. The novel itself is one of my favourites by this most under-rated novelist. It was found and published after her death and concerns the occupants of a strange yellow house who look after a widowed gentleman and a young girl newly arrived in 1970s London. The book has a mystical theme, the house representing a place where good things happen to the inhabitants. Looking at Doreen’s picture, I got a similar feeling: the yellow house stands on a corner with its lights on, the blue walls of the living room shining out through the open curtains. Next door is a grey house with a shaded light shining through its drawn curtains. Although not sinister in any way, it is certainly not as welcoming as its neighbour. In her commentary to this work Doreen wrote, “This yellow house and its companion caught my attention, while out walking one cold November evening, as a Mecca of warmth and comfort….”
This brings to mind another significant feature of this artist’s work. She regularly wanders the streets of the area in which she has lived for thirty-five years, looking for those buildings that reflect not only the passage of time but also the fading of a way of life. The East End has perhaps the most diverse history in the whole city. Largely working class, the area has seen multiple waves of migration: the Huguenots in the eighteenth century, the Jews in the nineteenth, and the Bengali in the twentieth. Each wave has left its mark, and Doreen is adept at finding buildings that testify to this history and awaken the viewer’s empathy. Every painting rewards the viewer’s close examination with such a story, such as Nana Yaa. In the caption to this work Doreen explains that she first saw fruit and vegetable stalls outside Tube stations in 1972, when she moved to London, and later found this Leytonstone shop which recalled the memory of those stalls. It is a wet January morning and the street is empty, apart from the man who runs the shop, seated outside it on the corner of the fruit display and barely noticeable at first as he looks intently at his phone. This everyday scene has symbolic resonance, the lone figure an everyman struggling to make a living against all the odds, his shop both a refuge and a burden.
Early in June this year The Gentle Author featured an interview with Doreen as part of the Spitalfields Life blog, in which she related how she returned to painting after a years-long hiatus. She also provided some interesting details of her philosophy, explaining that “A painting is successful for me when I believe I have captured the essence of a place in a moment.” Another East End painter, David Bomberg, used the phrase “Spirit in the Mass” to describe the force that he tried to portray in his later landscapes, their hidden emotional content. Although Doreen commented during our conversation that she finds Bomberg’s paintings “too dark,” both artists’ paintings evoke something that transcends visual reality — the human experiences that helped to create the place depicted.
The works in this show prompt a wide variety of empathetic reactions on the viewer’s part. In Look At Me! a lone mother watches her child on a brightly-lit fairground ride, in a picture that summons up childhood memories of exciting visits to annual fairs. Maryland, a study of another shop-front with a single figure sitting on a wall, watching as another man comes into view, invites us to speculate about his thoughts. This is what makes Doreen’s work so fascinating: although each painting portrays a familiar part of London, in her hands it becomes extraordinary. The corner shop, used mostly by local people, becomes emblematic of everyday life in the city, which, beneath the fast living, bright lights, and noise, is made up of millions quietly and gently going about their daily business. Some, like the man in this picture, even have leisure to sit and watch the world go by.
It was a great pleasure to meet Doreen and talk about her work, and to view these paintings in such sympathetic surroundings. It is reassuring to discover an artist in such symbiosis with her local community, recognised and supported by the place that she lovingly portrays. Although this show only ran until the 5th of July, with any luck Doreen’s work will some day be displayed to a wider audience in a larger gallery. --Paul Flux
