Whether it’s the good, bad or the ugly of the London Underground stations, one artist is painting them all.
Darren Hayman, from Crystal Palace, is on a one man mission to paint every single Tube station on the vast TfL network.
The 53-year-old musician-artist is working his way through painting every station on the vast network – from the furthest corners of Zone 9 on the Metropolitan line to the likes of Russel Square and Embankment.
But when Darren started the artistic mission, he made a huge mistake with the number of stations, thinking there are just 172.
When the reality of 272 stations dawned on him, Darren joked he needs to ‘have a little think and maybe lie down.’
He told Metro: ‘I’m interested in the far reaches of the Tube I have never been. I might walk the way. I have to do all of them at some point.’
The geeky project means Darren has some rare insight of what each station is like, and it has also revealed some nuggets about Londoners too.
But what has surprised him about the Tube?
Darren recently travelled to Amersham at the end of the Metropolitan line.
‘It cost around £25 to to Zone 9 and back. I thought it was really expensive at first,’ he said.
Darren tries to visit every station after he found that using pictures taken by others was uninspiring, and he prefers to paint ‘the real thing.’
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‘Chorleywood is one I painted on the platform. But I can’t quite bring myself to paint on all the 272 platforms, but I should do my own image sourcing.’
This means he will visit each station at least to take a picture, sometimes a black and white Polaroid.
‘The one I paint on location I will price up a bit, I might but a slight tax on them,’ he quipped.
The project does not have a clear end date as Darren tends to visit a set of stations in clusters. This week, he visited Acton and Ealing Broadway.
After painting football stadiums across the UK and now stations, he said he realised that ‘people have a fondness of things that are not there any more, and that might happen with Tube stations.’
The prettiest locations are not always the most sought after and passengers tend to form a special bond with their local station, he said.
‘When painting football stadiums, people don’t care what it looks like, and Tube stations have that same allegiance like to your local curry house.
‘So far selling the paintings, I don’t think people are buying the most pretty ones, but just ‘that’s my one,” he explained.
As for the most popular stations, he said he could have sold Blackhorse Road ‘ten times over.’
‘I don’t know if that’s because of Walthamstow’s new trendy status,’ Darren added.
Other often requested stations include ‘beautiful Holden ones’ such as Southgate, Chiswick Park and Tooting Bec.
The dog owner, who takes her pooch Minnie often with him to visit stations, said he hopes to have ‘a new favourite station by the end.’
‘The most extraordinary was Newbury Park, it has that Grade II listed curved bus shelter. It does not look like any other building I have seen, it’s very 1950s science fiction.’
His other favourite station is also the brutalist Blackhorse Road with its horse mosaic .
‘It’s not a pretty station, but it’s my station I went to the most,’ he said.
The weirdest thing he has discovered during the project is that ‘Londoners are quite immune to oddness.’
He said: ‘We see odd things every day – you get on the train at Shoreditch expecting someone to wear a piff helmet or dressed as gladiator!’
And the response from his fellow city dwellers to him painting on location has always been positive.
‘It’s a really good social activity. When I was young I used to worry about looking conspicuous, but I’m fine with that now. No one comes up and says ‘that sucks,’ they are curious.’
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