Artist Nick Botting's latest show celebrates the "current delight in focusing on the moment".
Titled 'Presence' it runs at the Portland Gallery in St James from May 9 to 31.
The Islington painter paints many of his local "haunts" including the Screen on the Green and further afield to Hampstead Heath's ponds as well as West End bars, the streets and theatres of Soho, and Cornish beaches.
He likes to paint on the spot, observing the scene and the people who move through it, which gives his work an immersive, spontaneous effect.
"I have chosen paintings with a real sense of place and time," he says of the show.
"I get so much more excitement out of being there, painting on the spot, watching people and seeing all the different types, particularly in London; from drawing how two people cross the road; or how someone leans on a post as they listen to their friends talking.
"These are the things that make a painting come alive, and because I always paint from life I hope that you get a sense of real people in my work."
Botting loves trying to "distil all the chaos that is a pub scene or a market into a painting that echoes the mood back to me".
He added: "So I sit there and draw and paint until I start to make some sense of the subject, with all its curious and unique qualities."
Botting is a National Portrait Gallery Award prize winner, whose past commissions include painting an FA Cup Final for the Football Association to celebrate completion of the new Wembley Stadium.
He's also been commissioned by the MCC as the England team’s official artist on tour to Pakistan, and painted Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee Flotilla for Lord Salisbury.
He feels his paintings are an antidote to the virtual digital world.
He said: "I think people are really into analogue things now, real experiences, for example there feels a renewed excitement about visiting a market, as if the act of picking up vegetables is a fresh discovery.
"And that alone makes me wonder how far from a balanced way of living we have drifted."
Botting says his carefully observed paintings are his "direct link to the subjects from which they were painted."
"I hope they reflect those subjects back with the same sense of presence."
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