The painter, who survived tragedy by throwing herself into art, has been honoured with a dazzling trail through east London – full of walls, bridges and underpasses adorned with her thrilling works
All is grey today at Cody Dock. The Lea – London’s second river, which snakes its way through the east of the city – is a greenish grey. Its banks are a muddy grey. The vast sky is a cotton wool grey. And the high-rises on the distant horizon are a bluey grey.
So the reds, yellows, oranges and greens that arch across the Lea feel like a sign of hope – a splash of colour against that samey palette. Hope is very much what the artist responsible for this burst of colour represents, although it’s fair to say she would have been stunned to see her drawing translated into vinyl and stretched across 60 metres (200ft) of bridge, six decades after her death.
