One perfectly blue early-October afternoon, one man and his sketchbook took a trip to Regent’s Park to explore the 20th edition of the Frieze outdoor sculpture exhibition.

Photogenic it may be, with its vibrant greens and occasional deep mauves, but being too manicured and twee Regent’s has never quite been my favourite of London’s Royal Parks – that accolade goes to Richmond. A perfect day for a visit it is though, not yet autumnal thanks to the briefest of Indian summers. I could have smelt the chlorophyll if it weren’t for the nearby exhaust fume clogged artery that is the Euston Road.

Despite the good weather and the added pull of Frieze 2023, a bell weather art festival for the high-snobriety, the park is remarkably quiet. The few fellow visitors are mainly made up of the most well-heeled tourists outside of Knightsbridge, few of whom pay any attention to the sculptures on display.

Those who do stop to take in the art are worth observing in order to undertake a survey of generational comparisons of modern metropolitan Britain: Gen Z’ers looking for the perfect Insta angle versus Millennials deciding if an Afro-futurist sculpture is OK to appropriate for their next tattoo versus Gen X’ers begging their kids to show some interest…then giving up. Boomers look on uninspired from a nearby bench.

Eavesdropping on a peach of a conversation between that group of Gen X’ers – “does reading Piers Morgan’s book make me a twat?” (no, but writing it does) – I mosey around the south-east corner of the park pondering which sculpture to perch myself in front of to sketch.

Louise Nevelson’s ‘Model for celebration 2’ catches my eye first. From some angles it puts me in mind of a mat black set of futurist pipe organs and from another perspective it looks like if Richard Rogers did cubism.

African identity is reflected in the giant afro pick and Black Power salute featured in Hank Willis Thomas’s ‘All Power To All People’ and in the humongous multicoloured totem pole of Zak Ové’s ‘The Mothership Connection’.

Above left: ‘Model for celebration 2’ by Louise Nevelson. Above right: ‘Yggdrasill/Books’ by Yuichi Hirako. Both at Frieze Sculpture 2023, Regent’s Park.

But it’s ‘The Friend’ by Josh Smith that prompts me to reach into my backpack for my sketchpad, instantly amused by his likeness to the Grim Reaper from Family Guy, complete with cartoon hands, a mahogany angel of death melting to his own demise. He is harmless and comically out of place here, by the beeches and the oaks, with his splendid John Nash-designed white-walled background. There’s something tactile about him that prompts each viewer to give his smooth surface a stroke and a squeeze. He looks like an aged, stained wood, but is actually patinated bronze and dated to this year. He makes for a good Friend in whose company to spend an hour.

Above left: ‘The Friend’ by Josh Smith. Above right: my rendering of The Friend takes shape.

It is said that ‘writing is thinking’ and if true, and it is a theory that I firmly subscribe to, then I believe that drawing is reflecting. Drawing fosters an intimate connection with the artist’s subject, which doesn’t occur when viewing it without the intention of rendering it to paper. Drawing is all about looking. In turn, this process opens up an avenue for reflection: lines and shapes appear that weren’t previously there, like spotting shapes in clouds but slower, and thoughts do the same; like those transient clouds, lines and thoughts shift form, evolve and become real, sometimes evaporating as if they never existed at all.

My drawing reaching its logical conclusion, I pack up and head back onto Euston Road. What would John Nash think of this drab strip, plonked almost disrespectfully close to one of his masterpieces? Who curated this carbuncular collection of construction? After such well-crafted surroundings, this is one of London’s ugliest and most polluted roads, but it’s the route home via a swift half of something golden and fruity in the ever-excellent Euston Tap – a chance to raise a glass to my new Friend.