York Street Station is a conductor of movement. Trains, buses, people - everything flows through it with purpose. As the Artist in Residence, I brought three Belfast School of Art students here for a plein-air workshop on the mezzanine, where Cavehill rises like a steady friend.  

Commuters move in choreographies: some hurried, some sleepy, some glued to phones, some reading with enviable focus. Couples lean into each other in rare pockets of stillness. I sketched one pair quietly. Love in a station always feels cinematic. 

Urban wildlife thrives here too - gulls coasting over rooftops, sparrows nesting in rafters, the occasional fox slipping through before dawn.  

A man from Newtownabbey told us he uses the bus-train combination every day because “it gives me time to grow into the morning.” He showed me the Journey Planner route on his phone bus to train, timed just right a small choreography made possible by this handy app. I tucked him into the corner of my painting, coat glowing in the afternoon light.  

The students painted the rhythmic geometry of it all - lines, shadows, sightlines stretching towards Cavehill. I love the process of being out there, in the moment, capturing as much of the light and composition that unfolds in those couple of hours. It's a meditative practice as much as it is a vocation. Sharing these insights, observations and skills with students is something I really enjoy. Reveal and not conceal. That's my motto in painting, 

I smiled. It was particularly dull and overcast that day, but there are always colours to be found in the greys and greys to be found in the colours.