ARTIST James Klinge will brighten up a Glasgow city centre street with a new set of murals.

The artist has begun work on three new portraits in Midland Street, beneath Glasgow Central Station.

It comes as part of city’s mural trail for which James plans to complete twelve portraits celebrating the Glasgow venue The Arches.

“The idea behind the murals are people who have had an affiliation with The Arches in the past and or in its current status as Platform,” the artist explained.

Restaurant and bar Platform opened in the former nightclub in 2018 after the venue shut in 2015.

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Explaining the latest three mural set to appear over the next few days, James said: “I’ll be painting a guy who used to DJ at The Arches and used to go to many gigs there and two female portraits of people who have enjoyed Platform.”

The street artist, who used to work under the pseudonym of Klingatron, creates his murals using pre-cut stencils which take weeks to make.

James added: “A lot of my time in lockdown has been spent in preparation. Because they are stencils the majority of the work is done in my studio.

“I have just been solidly working on them for the last wee while.”

The murals were all commissioned by Glasgow City Council and the artist planned to create three per year starting in 2019.

However, the coronavirus pandemic prevented any new additions last year.

“I didn’t know if it was going to happen because of Covid but thankfully I was given the green light towards the end of last year,” the artist added.

One of the previously completed murals included a self-portrait as an homage to James’ personal link to the venue.

“The reason I did the self-portrait was I had a solo exhibition in The Arches in 2008 called Making the Cut.”

The solo exhibition showed off James’ urban landscape paintings of Glasgow, which were also made with stencils.

The Midland Street murals are showcasing his love for creating portraits.

He explained that portraiture has always been his passion “given his influences in the art world” which includes artists like Rembrandt and Egon Schiele.