Construction has captivated rising star of British painting. Well, diggers have, anyway. This past year painter Peter Harrap (hailed a “great British hope” by John Russell Taylor in the Times) has concentrated on diggers. His publicist says he finds them dynamic and he likes the way machinery is man’s way of trying to control nature.

Of Storm Brewing in Basingstoke above, the Telegraph wrote: “The rolling landscape is scarred by tractors and earth diggers, but the creeping foliage in the foreground suggests that nature will eventually have its way.”

Harrap’s interest in construction began with a property he developed in the Oval in London. His work force consisted of Polish builders who knocked down walls while slurping at bottles of Vodka, and this got the artist interested the desire of man to stamp his identity on the natural world.

Harrap will be showing at Marlborough Fine Art during October 2005.