The North West and Me, or How Red Bricks and Road Signs Have Defined my Life and Work - by Caz Latham

From an early age, I would gaze up at any such red brick end-terrace and marvel at how special the people living there must feel. The honour of having the street sign on their house. I wondered if they felt they belonged there, just a little more than everyone else on the street. I imagined they must experience such pride: "this is our street, our place, we have the street sign".

There was no need whatsoever for this to be a famous or exclusive address – The glamour and glitter of the Golden Mile held no interest in comparison to the irresistible pull of miscellaneous streets and alleyways off Bloomfield Road, which I passed daily on the way to and from school.

These aren't pretty landscapes, but they're what I recognise as the real UK. These streets host pigeons, graffiti, litter, weeds, and street furniture that has seen better days. They are public transport routes, and locations of the smoky working men's clubs my late dad (a generational Manc) frequented as both punter and barman.

I found charm and romance in the mundanity – these places look and feel used and tired because they are. They're ordinary because we are. They are practical – endlessly useful, but not necessarily cared for. But they can mean the world to the people that live there, work there, even just pass through.

They have uninspiring names that don't transcend the locality, but while the place may hold no fame with the rest of the country, borough, or even town – its people are often fiercely protective, and proud to belong.

When I inevitably moved to Salford for university, then Manchester in my mid-20s, I felt like I had come home. This is my place. The generational pull. I belong here.

I picked up visual art again in 2018 after a few years' hiatus, and have been inspired by the cities and boroughs of Greater Manchester ever since.

In so many streets and alleys I see the ordinary, decayed, functional and unpretty UK landscape I admire. There's true beauty and truth in the mundane. History blends with constant development and change. There is glorious colour where you wouldn't expect it, and undeniable signs of life wherever you look.

For the past 5 years I have been a regular train commuter on the Hope Valley Line into Piccadilly. It's a veritable treasure chest of obscure train stations and red brick railway nooks, and I see something which inspires me on every trip. Many of my landscape works can now be tracked along this very journey – you can put the artworks in order, and follow the scenes from one stop to the next.

So far, I haven't lived in my coveted 'house with the road sign on it'. Maybe one day. But at least for now, I get such joy from capturing on canvas an essence of the feeling it invokes, over and over again.

Caz Latham
https://linktr.ee/cazlathamart

21/11/25