Why Do We Live in Cities?

Why do we live in cities? Grey buildings rise like jagged teeth, concrete and steel stretching into clouded skies. Beneath them, we scurry between meetings and deadlines, heads bowed, ears filled with the ceaseless hum of engines and construction. Cities promise opportunity, connection, culture—but often, they forget the soul.

And so we seek escape.

I first sketched Urban Escape while seated on a weathered bench beneath an old pohutukawa in Western Park. The city growled beyond the trees: the rattle of trucks on the nearby off-ramp, the sharp bursts of sirens, the endless murmuring of motion. But here, among tangled roots and fallen leaves, a different rhythm pulsed—slower, softer, like a sigh. A tui landed nearby, cocking its head as if to inspect my sketchpad, then vanished into the canopy.

I had come for a break, but I found inspiration and Urban Escape.

We build cities to house our ambitions, to organise the chaos of growth. But in doing so, we forget that we need to live there, in the concrete maze; we plant gardens. We carve out spaces where time slows, where we can sit still long enough to hear ourselves think.

The idea for Urban Escape was simple: a painted window into the kind of garden that brings soothing calm. Lush ferns, stone paths, water trickling unseen. A sanctuary nestled in the city’s heart, not apart from it, but coexisting—a necessary counterpart to the modern world.

That moment in the park, with the filtered sunlight and birdsong, reminded me that escape doesn’t require distance; it can be found in the present. It requires intention. A park bench and a sketchpad. A quiet pause beneath an old tree. A garden made not just of plants, but of space, of silence.

Urban Escape became more than a painting. It became a question: why do we crowd ourselves into concrete and then long so deeply to get out? Perhaps it’s not about leaving the city at all, but about remembering to build in space for stillness—little sanctuaries where we can breathe, and remember we are human.

Not everything needs to be loud to be alive.

28 Urban escape

Oil on fine portrait linen: 95 x 178 cm; 37.4 x 70.1 in