Think Madonna, David Bowie and Johnny Depp.  All have delved into art as a way to mental wellness.  

This is what art means to Camberwell artist and former crime scene photographer David Urquhart. His exhibition, at the Art Café in Camberwell in southeast London, showcases paintings that are mainly of fleeting moments on the streets of London. Repurposing his skills as a photographer, Urquhart paints from his pictures.   

Urquhart, who says art is his calling, came to it late in life. With parents who were avid painters and art teachers, Urquhart admits he was “always interested in art”. 

“It’s a core part of me,” he told South London Lines.  

But fresh out of university, he came to realise that the world of art can be hard to make a living. Some of his early paintings were shown in Budapest, where his father lived, but mostly, it seemed difficult to make any money from art. Urquhart followed the profession of painter and decorator, but became unhappy with the restrictiveness of the work.   

With art now permanently on the sidelines, or so it seemed, Urquhart took a shot at a job he saw in the newspaper one day.  

“It was a forensics job, but they needed a photographer. With my art I do on the side, I described myself as a visual person. In the end they gave me the job and trained me up, but it was hard to see all that”  

“All that” was the crime scenes he had to photograph. Sometimes they could be very disturbing to look at, but for 16 years Urquhart ploughed on. By now he had two young children, so he felt his duty as a father was to stay in work.  

“It became harder to find time to paint and take photographs, but I kept it on the go because I didn’t want it to totally stop. But then I bumped into an old friend”.  

The old friend from school told Urquhart about his work as an artist and it got the crime scene photographer thinking anew about his career and ambitions in the world of art.  

“Art was the side hustle that always got me through mentally more than financially, I see some tough things some days, and it was a little piece of calm I could confide in,” he says.  

From that point, Urquhart was inspired to start building up a portfolio of paintings.  He was now determined to find somewhere in London to show his work.  

“I would get up in the morning and paint because that was the only time, I had free. So, I would get up early, paint for a couple of hours and then each week I would feel more optimistic about it. I even started selling my work on a site called Saatchi Art.”  

Then he got word of an opportunity at the Art Café. He knew this was a huge opportunity, given how hard it is to find space in galleries.   

“It was perfect timing actually; they were looking for new art to put up and I had just completed a set of new paintings. I put in an application, and it was chosen,” says Urquhart.  

So how does it feel to be an artist, finally? Urquhart says it is amazing to see the technological advances. Phone cameras have been a massive help as his paintings are mainly of life and action on the streets of London. 

“If I see a view I like and characters I like, I don’t have to worry that I don’t have my camera with me, because with phones now that doesn’t matter. I think it is amazing that everyone can use their mobiles to make art. It’s accessible.”  

With plans to not just sell his art online, but sell postcards with his works on in the Art Café, Urquhart says it is possible his artistic work will bring in a small revenue. 

“I recommend getting into art,” he says. “In my case it has been important for my mental health but also in being passionate about something. I just wish people knew how liberating it feels to have something from your brain to something on a canvas, and have people want to see it.”