Reuben Colley was commissioned by Brown Shipley to produce a picture featuring 45 Church Street, which is the new home of the company’s growing team in the city.
The title, 9:45 Church Street, refers both to Brown Shipley’s offices being on the 9th floor of the landmark building off Colmore Row and to the time of day evoked in the painting.
Peter Collier, Marketing Director of Brown Shipley, said: “The move to 45 Church Street to accommodate our growing team in Birmingham represents an important milestone for Brown Shipley in the Midlands and we wanted to mark it in an appropriate fashion.“Reuben is an artist with an international reputation and we have long admired his work so it was welcome news when he agreed to produce a painting for us to hang in the boardroom of the new building. The end result is a striking, inspirational piece that shows how 45 Church Street has become part of the Birmingham cityscape.”
Reuben’s paintings are in demand from collectors around the world and while they typically sell for between £3,000 and £30,000, the highest price paid for one to date is nearly £50,000. In February last year he launched his own gallery, Reuben Colley Fine Arts, in Moseley. He has had a number of sell-out exhibitions in London and Birmingham and his work appears in a number of public collections, including that of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Reuben said: “I have always felt a certain attraction to the idea of city life, working late, followed by a busy social life. It has been one of the aspects of urban living that has been a recurring subject in my paintings. “When commissioned by Brown Shipley to paint their new Birmingham headquarters, and having seen the new building and its surroundings, I instantly envisaged the painting as a return to my Hopper-inspired cityscapes, which felt like being reunited with an old friend, and it has been a very enjoyable experience to capture, once again, the romance of city life.
“The title 9:45 turned out to be more than a reference to the location of the offices, it was just about the perfect time when during those late summer evenings and perhaps after a few gin and tonics the sunset gives way to a royally blue sky as night falls, and as the neons come into play, the urban landscape is transformed into a theatrical stage of spotlights and shadow, the perfect time for a painting.”
