'How I pass my time on the tour bus' - Delays front man Greg Gilbert reveals inspiration for city art exhibition

But front man of Delays Greg Gilbert, who has toured the world playing to sell-out crowds, has admitted he prefers to spend his time alone in the tour bus – drawing.

“I’m never not with my sketch book. Even when the band has been on the road, I’ve always sketched.

“It’s somewhere I have always gone for sanctuary.

“The tour bus is a strange place full stop.

"To me, the tour bus is a permanent mobile twilight because there’s a tint in the windows and curtains.

"You are cocooned in a little back lounge and you wake up and you might be in one of the world’s most beautiful cities but you are there in darkness parked up behind a building.

“The lads in the band get frustrated because I won’t leave the tour bus. I just want to sit and draw and read.

“I’m sure my experiences of touring life could be much greater than they are,” he laughs.

But Greg explains after performing on stage he takes comfort in creating art.

“Being on stage has never come naturally to me. I have to find something in me to do it because I still find it terrifying and so, when I’ve done it all I want to do is retreat.

“I think that’s why I stay in the tour bus – and the drawings I have are so small. I think it’s the opposite to an atmosphere at a gig with the high volume, heat, lots of colour, for me it’s about reining it in and trying to possess it a little bit more because there is so much about being in a band you don’t possess.”

The hours he has spent drawing though have paid off because Greg, who lives in Bitterne Park with his fiancée and one-year-old daughter, is now an award-winning artist with his most frightening gig to date in his diary – a solo exhibition at Southampton City Art Gallery.

The show Through Sand will feature miniature biro work depicting a mythologised Southampton as well as acrylic portraits he will reveal for the first time.

Greg initially went into the gallery to enquire about hiring some of the foyer space for his work – but curators loved his work so much they wanted to display it in the gallery.

The music star, who grew up in Southampton and was inspired to show off his art thanks to his late grandfather, said: “I couldn’t believe it.

"I’ve been going into the gallery since I was a kid and admiring artists. It really is big.

“It’s the biggest exhibition I’ve had so far and I’m definitely jumping in with both feet but there I am nervous about what people will think.

“When you are in the process of making the work, you are privately burning, you’re doing it and satisfying that part of you but the moment it goes out into the world then I start questioning, picking holes and flaws.”

Despite being known Greg for his music including hits Long Time Coming and Nearer Than Heaven, Greg has never known life without art.

He explains: “I’ve never not done it. My first memory is doing a biro drawing of a bird when I was 18 months old – my mum has got the drawings.

“Drawing has been a constant in my life, a compulsion and something I’ve lost days to.

“I just had to step outside of myself to think about putting it out there.”

For Greg, the collection of work he will display began here in Southampton at the City Council photographic archives.

The former Winchester School of Art student, who won Best in the South of England at the National Open Art Competition in 2013 and was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition last year, became interested in studying historic icons and combining them with contemporary elements.

He explains: “I’ve been going to their photographic archives looking back through the years because all my work is Southampton centric. I got very interested in the sanctity of memory – how precious these memories were.

“None of the drawings are an attempt to create naturalistic scenes. If they were real, they would be like mini stages looking at the sacred nature of each moment and each memory.

“I love to walk, I walk everywhere. I find it quite exciting. I can walk around St Denys and very much everything feels very tangible, that this happened there, so and so was here. You feel you are on the cusp of something. It is very vivid. I’m obsessed by the region.

“I feel everywhere is haunted, not in a literal sense, but I feel there are sediments building up, memories and moments.

“It’s that feeling of a richness laying in everything that I try to capture and I hope other people will see in my work.

“What’s interesting about the biro is it’s a cheap thing you see everywhere but particularly when you use it to draw quite historic images, there’s a real clash there.”

Greg talks about one biro work titled Priest which features a Greek Orthodox priest from 1890 he recreated from an image found in the city archives resting his hand on a table. On the table is his daughter’s favourite teddy bear.

As well as inspiring his art, Greg says being a dad is shaping his lifestyle.

He says: “Being in the band you can get very caught up in a touring lifestyle which is fantastic and amazing but being a dad you appreciate every moment much more, all the small things.

“I may not get much sleep because the baby might be crying but I’m really difficult to be around if I don’t get to create in a day.

“For me it is about expression. We have had a quiet couple of years with the band with people having babies and the music industry changed so much so we all had to look at other ways to express ourselves. We’re now working on so many new melodies with the band so there are exciting times coming up.

“But I just wanted the freedom to create, that’s it.

“And all those things that people find strange about you, I believe are the very things I think you need to pursue.”

Exhibitions

*The exhibition Through Sand at Southampton City Art Gallery opens this Friday and runs until July 18.

*Greg’s work will also appear in a group show at Solent Showcase Gallery that will run from March 27 to May 9.

For more information go to greggilbert.co.uk.