Daybreak

Daybreak is an original oil painting from Alexander Millar's Working Man Collection.

These landscapes reference the UK's industrial past and the post industrial of the 70's and 80s when many experienced the extreme decline of heavy industry.

Some of these landscapes include very identifiable buildings, whiel others are an alamgam of typical industrial edifices found in many British cities.

"I remember leaving school in 1976 at the age of 16 and wanting to go into theatre. Me and my friend Brian Kiff had the opportunity to become something that resembled part of the stage furniture but it would have been a start at least, but my father had other ideas. Becoming an actor in those times was as good as an admission of being gay in my dad’s eyes. So he said “ I’ve got you a job with your uncle Peter, you’re going to be a joiner”.

I left Greenwood Academy on the Friday and was on a building site in Glasgow on the Monday and what a wake up call that was.

Spending time with a bunch of hairy-arsed blokes who trailed their knuckles on the ground when they walked and ate road kill sandwiches for lunch was a wonderful introduction to adult life.

The one thing that broke the tedium of those days were times that I would have to get up before the crack of dawn on a late autumn or winters' day and would have to walk to whatever building site I happened to be working on.

Sometimes the light on those mornings was amazing. I loved how when the sunlight broke through and would melt the frost on one side of the scene and revealed all the colour of the landscape, while the other side would be in deep shadow and still covered in white frost.

It's moments like this that I try to sometimes capture in a painting and this one called “Daybreak” is one such piece."