In a series of conversations during the 1960s with Edwin Mullins, entitled The Loneliness of L.S. Lowry, the artist discussed his preoccupation with figure paintings during this decade, 'During the past ten years Lowry has tended to abandon his panoramic mill scenes and massed figure-subjects in favour of close-up studies of strange, individual figures, described with a distinctly grotesque humour. Lowry generally has a story about each of them.

'It just happened that way. Everything in my life has just happened, There's a grotesque streak in me and I can't help it'. My characters? They are all people you might see in a park. They are real people, sad people; something's gone wrong in their lives. I'm attracted to sadness, and there are some very sad things you see. There is something about these people that is remarkable, you know. They have a look in their eye. You wonder what they are really looking at. There is a mystery about them. I feel I am compelled to try and draw them. I wonder all the time: what is their life?' (see exhibition catalogue, L.S. Lowry, Salford Art Gallery, 1987, p. 81).