Part of a group exhibition with four other artists, in this work I was attempting to combine a re-evaluation and reconciliation of childhood with reflections on issues from my adult life including environmental and ecological concerns.

At that time I was making ten journeys a week to work and back by train. I would often observe fleeting scenes from the window which reminded me of the playgrounds of my youth when I would escape from my suburban surroundings to “the nearest faraway place”, slightly more rural places which were much more easily accessible in those days, prior to extensive urban development.

From the relatively detached vantage point the train afforded me I found a degree of objectivity not unlike the objectivity one feels when watching events on a television screen. This objectivity also combined with another feeling of loss of control.

Within the work, the motif of the railway line was also used as a comment on the environmental historical link to the industrial revolution, its resultant effects on our relationship with the natural world and my personal past and present life.

Pictures made remotely of events in the wider world such as de-forestation and other current issues seen on television photographed from the comfort of my armchair in front of my gas fire, were combined with more personally intimate scenes made in places I used to play in as a child in more care-free times.

Adrian Pinckard.