5″ tile with gesso raised texture, acrylic, and sand

I must say that the new year has started off with loads of doom and gloom across the world, however in my studio I can shut all of that out and concentrate on my work. The more that I look at the natural formations and colours of the Earth, the more I am fascinated. I am struck by the similarity in shape between a ridge of mountains and the shape of the backbone for instance, which brings us into the world of macro and micro, salt flats from the earth can look like amoeba or plankton and sinter crusts resemble algae, and lichen on rocks. I have been working on a series of 13cm square tiles, immersing myself in texture, relief and paint, the tiles are to be exhibited together as a larger wall piece, the piece can be flexible in that it can be larger or smaller to suit the space in which it is exhibited. I envisage maybe a hundred pieces, 30 of which have been completed so far. At present the tiles fall into three categories, land, water, ice. I believe that in the depths of a grey and dismal English winter, my studio is a refuge.

13 cm square tile part of “earth series”

New work new pain, is almost a mantra. Although the work will be a continuation, of previous work I want to look again through new eyes, think about materials, go back to investigation in the light of what I know now and recompose and reset the alignments. This period is a time of intense fog, working through a mist of thought trying to pick up threads, dropping them, and searching for more. Jottings and a melange of bits and pieces, sometimes to be binned, occasionally to be the beginning of new work. Sorry technical problems still with image uploading, I will get help, promise.

Gesso spheres

I have determined to get to grips with adding more to my blog and an obvious improvement would be the addition of images. I have tried several times to upload images to no success, so by next week I am hoping to have these as a regular feature. Work at the moment is centered on making work to sell over the Christmas period, this brings up the dichotomy that most artists have about bread and butter work. What would Michelangelo have done? He worked for who ever paid him, is the answer, and as is documented, the relationship between him and his client was not always harmonious. I do not have any delusions of being Michelangelo, but I have similar stresses and demands, interesting that the more things change the more they stay the same.

I absolutely loathe having to do the administration side of stuff, for example, cataloging work, doing the books for the accountant, and endless other tasks. It is Monday morning and for all those people out there, who think it  would be lovely to be an artist, think again, here is a sample of my To Do list for this week. 1) Write an e-mail to send out to various selected galleries 2) Work out the approximate overall space that my current works would take for exhibition purposes. 3) List all exhibits, and accompanying material 4) Write my blog 5) Finish off and package work to go to Galleries 6)  Re-organize all my paperwork and publicity sheets I think thats enough for starters, keeping in mind that it is Monday morning! Oh for the will to carry on.

I have sourced some beautiful clear acrylic boxes for my earth scrolls, so that they can be viewed from all around, these boxes are custom made and will also  house the earth spheres. The scrolls have been created from the panel that I absolutely hated as a 2d work but is great for pulling out all the relief and texture I want for the scrolls. The hated panel, had taken three months to make, and had a lot of detail, so ideal for the purpose of the scrolls and makes me feel somewhat better for the three months spent making it, also, even though it doesn’t work as a large panel, I will check to see if it can translate to smaller works.

It is a while since I last wrote, and xmas was part of the reason, however, I’m back, and ready to blog. I found my exhibition inspirational, and loved the feedback, so thanks to all those who gave me that. I now feel ready to move on to start new work, and have made a begining with some paper casts as a starting point, and the grim weather outside helps to concentrate the mind on studio work. I have lost contact details of a client that I have been doing a commission for, so if you are reading this please get in touch. My camera is temporarily out of action, but should be back by next week. This blog can also be read with images at the a-n website.

For a visual artist, I have to say that the preamble up to an exhibition is to say the least, tedious, I wish I had a PA! Getting together a press release, sending out invites, (in the midst of a postal strike), organising posters, flyers, and information for miscelanious people. Trying to do it on an overloaded computer, that just wants to go to bed, and does, in the midst of my fraught efforts to e-mail out. Finding out who is still in post, I just discovered that my City council have done away with the Arts Officer, the previous County Arts officer had been deleted, but there was a new one in post. Blah blah, and on top of all of that, I have had the dreaded whatever, not flu, but something akin, not enough for sympathy, but enough to make you feel bad and want to crawl under the duvet. So one more week to fine tune, all work packaged up and ready to go.