Alan Spillett's new book of truck paintings Roadscapes II advance information

Roadscapes II: Landscapes of the Road, Alan Spillett. Hardback book, 160 pages with 180 illus., ISBN 978-1-906853-99-0. Now in stock at Old Pond at £24.95.

Artist Alan Spillett’s paintings of lorries have mostly been commissions from people who wanted a particular vehicle depicted for a personal connection. His scenes range from the days of the horse-drawn carriage to the trucks that thunder up and down our roads today, and are the work of a ‘jobbing painter’, he would have you believe.

Yet these paintings capture much more than just the vehicles and their colourful liveries. They depict life on the road throughout the seasons, capturing to the full the experiences of so many drivers. In each picture, the lorry is the star turn and the background is the stage – often dramatic depictions of exact locations that are the workplace of the lorry driver: the countryside, landscapes of the road, and street scenes as well as the cafés that help to sustain them. An ERF artic loaded with bricks following the old coach road from Fishguard to London, passing near the original line of the road where the mail coach ran a couple of hundred years before, or an AEC MkV 6-wheeler and trailer fleeting past the Ardlui Viaduct at the top end of an autumnal Loch Lomond – these are strongly evocative images.

The paintings are accompanied by captions describing the context of the pictures. There are also features on aspects of trucking and truckers, photographs and poetry inspired by the life of a trucker, adding up to a fulfilling read. Alan’s images range widely through England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland – with a few from even further afield.

The paintings in Roadscapes II have not been published in book form before, and many have been prepared specially for this new book. Together they continue to reveal Alan’s lasting passion for commercial road transport, as well as the respect for the lorry drivers, hauliers and their families who have been his colleagues, friends and patrons over the years.

Alan Spillett spent the first twenty or so years or his working life in the 1960s, '70s and '80s as a long-distance lorry driver before becoming a full-time painter, portraying the subjects he knows best – lorries and the open road. Over the past 27 years he has painted hundreds of road transport subjects and, with his wife Colleen, has displayed his travelling picture gallery at steam and country shows far and wide.