Post Exhibition Reflection

Well didn't it turn out well....

The exhibition

Here are some shots of the installed work (for all those who cannot make it to the gallery) and some reflections on the project as a whole. Overall I feel confident that I pretty much achieved what I set out to do - to create a body of work that speaks to the locality I live and work in, to produce a series of inter related pictures that have both their own singularity, personality and character on the one hand and some sort of collective integrity on the other. The separation of the digitally produced collages (and the small selection, six, of the same) made more sense of the process and the use of the purely photographic images as postcards (an idea that I cannot claim as entirely my own!) tied the whole together. Of course some pictures could be stronger - particularly as the deadline loomed decisions for worse (and occasionally) better made the corpus more uneven than ideally I would have wished. But overall as an exercise in a form of visual psycho-geography and as a body of paintings I am happy.

Over and Done With...ish...

If you have followed this saga to this point then you probably know that the show finally opened this past weekend. At last I am catching up on things and want to post some images and reflections in the next day or so. One might think the work is done but just as I was settling into some new work in the studio yesterday I got a call from the Leicester Mercury (the 'local' evening paper) asking me to pitch up to the gallery for a feature. Today I fielded calls from a listings magazine and Leicestershire Life, a monthly glossy, both of which wanted copy and images. All good PR but eating into the painting time!

Still I am now focussed on my Conversation Pieces, something I've been working on for two years now, but which took a back seat during the latter stages of FTEW. Its a relief to be working on a larger size again!

Off and running

Just about to go and collect the work from the studio and deliver to the gallery...hopefully all will be at least touch dry! The genesis of this project goes back quite a way... some earlier pictures, not of uniform size and on board, with significant amounts of collage and yet based on the notion of each representing a location nearby were started in the early 00's. The picture above was taken in the Art School at Derby where 4 or 5 of these earlier pictures were exhibited around 2004 or 5.

My decision to exhibit the photo/text pieces as postcards in traditional postcard racks creates quite a bit of additional wall space in the show. I'm tempted to dig out some of this earlier series as a counterpoint to those on display in the larger room. We'll see how it goes in the gallery...

Here's the Invitation!

If you can, please come along on Saturday 16th July from 6 to 8pm. More details from the Tarpey website

Beginning of the Endgame

It's that Beckett moment... yesterday I revised four paintings, discarded one and let three be. The addition of copious amounts of Liquin should ensure they dry sufficiently to be transported from the studio to the gallery next Monday morning. Some fifty seven canvases will be pared down to the forty five that will make up the body of substantive work. I am awaiting delivery of the forty five postcards that will be the bigger part of the 'backroom' and of the three racks on which - appropriately I think - they will be displayed. In addition there may be two or three other minor 'surprises'. The studio has a fresh, mildly Scandinavian air to it now...three larger canvases sit on the walls - part of the series of 'Conversation' pieces that started two year or so back and will probably continue for another year or so. For the moment these have given me, as of yesterday afternoon, a strong sense of release...

Stubborn Brutes

There are always pictures that allude you...the ones that just won't come right whatever you think to do with them. Here's the small clutch of paintings from this project corralled together as the 'stubborn brutes' yesterday. It's a holding pen for radical surgery that some of them are getting today...

Finishing Touches

Some twelve canvases seem to be evading the finishing touches...and yet they must be done in the next two days (given adequate drying times)...so away to the studio...