Chorlton collects postcards, and the postcards serve as the basis for his paintings. For the most part they are not conventionally scenic views, though he does have a penchant for cherry blossom and other flowering trees. Otherwise he depicts anonymous urban settings, including city centre expanses and more isolated modernist blocks that look like the kind of architecture you usually encounter on the urban periphery.
They are ordinary places, presumably densely inhabited, but we don’t see much of the inhabitants – a single, distant car on the road, perhaps – and the mood of the images is tinged with a gentle, reflective melancholy. Often scenes are glimpsed by night. Chorlton likes the misty fluorescence of garage forecourts and the pools of artificial light that dissolve the hard edges of deserted city streets.
