It's a while since I posted anything, and meantime the world has changed. The exhibition at The Loft Gallery was of course postponed, and we are all still in lockdown. As yet there is no prospect of exhibiting any work in the near future.
I continue to work away at things in my studio at home, and I hope that towards the end of the year we can all start to get back to normal life.
I'm very pleased to say that I will be exhibiting some of my paintings and drawings at The Loft Gallery, St. Margaret's Hope, South Ronaldsay, Orkney, from 18th April until 19th May 2020. The gallery is in a wonderful location, near the southernmost tip of Orkney, and just a quick stroll from the short-sea-crossing ferry. The gallery is open from 10 until 5 p.m., Monday to Saturday. Please come along and visit.
Full steam ahead once again, getting ready for my joint exhibition in Edinburgh with fellow artists Toni Harrower and Peter Swales.
This will be at the Dundas Street Gallery, and runs from 3rd May through to 21st May 2019. The opening afternoon is on the 3rd- come along for a glass of wine and some nibbles.
The ARI exhibition, entitled "Reclamation", is in full swing. Just another week to go.
For the last couple of weeks Susan and I have been working on a screen print of some geese, which are a regular winter feature in the fields around the studio. You can see the results in the drawing and painting section. Birders amongst you might be able to identify the species?
I've taken the decision to stop posting news to my Tumblr website, as I disagree with the censorship some of my fellow artists are facing with Tumblr's new policy. It is ridiculous to censor images of paintings and drawings (even famous, historical ones) just because they show nudity. While I agree with making it more difficult for people to post images which are illegal, this is political correctness gone mad. Figure drawing, for goodness sake!
A few more details for the ARI exhibition, which is titled "Reclamation". This will be in the Small Gallery, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from 29th October through until 16th December 2018. The flier for the exhibition is here (pdf)- Reclamation flier
The exhibition is open all the time during those dates, and is free to enter. Most of the work on show was created specially for this exhibition.
Some good news from Grampian Hospitals Art Trust: they have invited me to exhibit at The Small Gallery within Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, opening on 30th October and running until 16th December 2018. I will post more details once I have things firmed up.
I received a phone call from Grampian Health Arts Trust today to tell me that they have cancelled all of the exhibitions planned for His Majesty's Theatre, due to "funding issues". Pity, I was looking forward to that and it would have been some welcome exposure.
I was keeping the diary free for those three months in the summer, so as yet there is nothing on the cards for 2018. I will be exhibiting in Edinburgh in 2019, from 1st May at the Dundas Street Gallery, together with a couple of other artists.
Not a great deal to report this month- I've been working away at a series of paintings for the show later this year at HM Theatre in Aberdeen, a couple of which you can now see on the paintings page: Reclamation 1 and 2. There are two more on the easels, one nearly done and one half way.
Apart from that, my wife Susan and I invested in some new screen-printing equipment and the results of our efforts can be seen on the website: Bennachie from South Meiklemoss. This print is genuinely a combined effort, with initial images from which the design was taken provided by the two of us, and the whole process of preparing the 5 screens, and printing, done by us both. It is a run of 5 in Artists' Proof form, signed and mounted. We used the image for our Christmas card this year.
Plans are under foot for an exhibition in Edinburgh in May, 2019, in collaboration with a couple of other artists- watch this space.
A couple of things to report this month. NEOS went reasonably well, with just short of 200 visitors, but well down on previous years.
I have a solo exhibition of paintings at His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen (Dress Circle Bar Gallery) next summer. The exact dates have yet to be finalised but it will run through the summer, May to August 2018. The exhibition will be of oil paintings, and will be all completely new work. My current focus is around the subject of our short lifespans, and the permanence of what we leave behind. This entire series of paintings stems from the large oil painting that was part of my degree show "Attempting to fly but not succeeding" which I look at every day (it hangs in my living room). I spent some time this summer sketching and collecting resources in Orkney.
Well NEOS (North East Open Studios) is now in full swing, and our opening night on Friday 8th September went really successfully. The weather stayed calm and bright and 35 people came out to see the preview. The first day of NEOS proper attracted 25 visitors, so a little down on previous years. We are open right through until Sunday 17th (except Wednesday). Come along and see what the four of us are exhibiting this year.
NEOS (North East Open Studios) starts next week, with the opening night on Friday 8th September 2017, and the public exhibition from 9th to 17th. This year I am exhibiting with three other artists, here in Collieston- Hannah Halliday, and Neil and Louise McIvor. Neil is a painter and the other two are primarily sculptors / socially engaged art. The opening night is a private view- RSVP if you would like to come along.
I'm very pleased to say that the painting "Reclamation (2)" has been pre-selected for the Royal Institute of Oil Painters' Annual Exhibition 2017 at the Mall Galleries in London.
A head's up about the next exhibition, entitled "Playing Real". This is a joint show with my friends and colleagues Craig Duncan and Luke Vinnicombe, and will be at Aberdeen's Seventeen Gallery on Belmont Street, from 4th March through the whole month. Please come along and see it.
I've just added a new painting to the gallery. "Correction" is a painting made for the October exhibition at Aberdeen Arts Centre, which closed recently. It is inspired by the Haiku poem written by Twig, "The City Inside a Cloud". The painting is set in a very old part of the centre of Aberdeen and features several artist friends.
Studio GC08 Collective will be exhibiting at North East Open Studios this year, which begins next Saturday, 10th September, and runs through to 18th September, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. All four of us will have paintings, drawings, photographs and prints on display at South Meiklemoss. There are free NEOS catalogues, which includes a map of all the exhibitors, all over the place in the region- but if you have trouble getting one please write me a note on the contact page, with your address, and I'll send you one.
The others in Studio GC08 are Toni Harrower, Charlotte Johnston and Melpomeni Irakleous.
I'm very pleased to say that the collective of four artists Studio GC08, of which I am part, have won one of three ACT Graduate Awards this year, and will be exhibiting at Aberdeen Arts Centre for the whole of October 2016. The others in Studio GC08 are Toni Harrower, Charlotte Johnston and Melpomeni Irakleous. The exhibition will be derived from a Haiku poem, given to us by the poet and sculptor Alexander "Twig" Champion, also an alumnus of Gray's:
The city inside a cloud,
All is white and waterfiled,
There is rain in my pocket.
Each of us will interpret the poem in our own way. It should be an interesting show!
I had a request from someone who wanted to know what paints I use. Oil paints: at college they started us off with Daler Rowney Georgian oil paints, which are a good price for students and quite good quality. I changed to using Winsor and Newton Artists' oil paints in my 3rd year and wow, what a difference. More expensive but so much brighter and vibrant. There are a few paints there that I'm not so keen on, e.g. the texture of Cobalt Blue (like honey) and Yellow Ochre (gritty) but otherwise very happy with them.
For the last few months I've been trying out Michael Harding oil paints, and these are fantastic- though pricey. My core pallete tends to be titanium white, french ultramarine, lemon yellow, sap green, olive green, bright red, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, burnt umber. I'll occasionally add cobalt blue, prussian blue, viridian, alizarin crimson, permanent rose, naples yellow, winsor yellow, depending on the painting.
Last week was taken up with moving everything out of college, and back into my own studio. There are a few things to get sorted this week: getting this website finished; finalising the publicity material for the ACT Award, which I won with three of my friends; starting to plan forward to exhibitions in September and October.
I'll be doing NEOS (North East Open Studios) again this year: keep an eye on this page for details.
