Orkney Exhibition

There's so much going on just now that I forgot to blog about my forthcoming exhibition in Kirkwall, Orkney.

I'm so delighted to be taking my Orkney work back to the area, it feels like a circle completed to me. The show will be running for a month, and I really hope people will think I have done Orkney justice - it's a tall order, it's a spectacular and amazing place!

The exhibition, featuring landscape and abstract work, centres around Orkney's Neolithic Heart and features paintings of the Stenness Stones, Ring of Brodgar, Watchstone, Broch of Gurness, Bay of Skaill and Scapa Bay.

It's being held at...

For Arts Sake Gallery
(which is above the VAO offices on Bridge Street in Kirkwall)

Friday 9th March to Wednesday 11th April 2012

open Monday - Friday 10am - 4pm, and Saturdays 10 - 2pm

I'll be at a Meet the Artist session on Saturday 10th March between 12 - 2pm - so if you can, please do pop along for refreshments and a first look at the exhibition, would be great to see you there!

If you are on Facebook, there's a Facebook event - just click 'join' to receive updates and a reminder.

(Images of some of the work in the show...)

As Yet Untitled...

What a contrast to the series of abstracts I've been working on for the last few weeks! All heavy colours and the relative gloom of peering through sea water... This week I think some premature spring has hit me and I've begun these (as yet untitled) light, airy, expressive, intuitive abstracts.

They have been fun - seems like rather an indulgence to carry on and do more, but I might just anyway!

I've been using the colours I seem to have picked for a whole host of landscape projects recently - cadmium red or crimson, cobalt blue, white and yellow ochre. The black marks are charcoal - something I quite often use for field sketches, working it into wet acrylics. I can't think I've used that on any abstracts before - but perhaps I have and forgotten...

These were unplanned, off the cuff, as I sometimes like to work -but of course this means thy are still inspired by various things. In this case I guess the list -or perhaps that should be 'ingredients' - goes Paul Nash, Katy Moran, Elizabeth Blackadder's early 60's landscapes, the boat in landscape painting I've been working on this week for the 'Ruin' exhibition, the cold Winter sun that came out for a bit this week, dividing up and balancing space, a big delivery or pristine white new canvases (not wanting to totally cover them), dreaming of huge open skies (Orkney, Isle of Lewis, Caithness), Valentines Day and themes of love, trying to get my affairs in order / make sense out of chaos before going away next week.

20 x 24" mixed media on canvas - as yet untitled

20 x 30" mixed media on canvas - as yet untitled

As I was messing about outside earlier today, trying to get some good light on the canvases to photograph them I was suddenly aware of a little face staring out of the house at me - my son watching and waving, if you can spot him there!

Stories from the Sea

I've been busy the last few days - it occurred to me that there might be limited opportunity to really get into painting abstracts over most of the coming year, as I have several mainly landscape painting trips to work on, and a big exhibition of landscape work in the late Summer. So I've decided to let myself mad for a week or two on a series of abstracts, before I get embroiled in all that.

I did a painting some time back called 'Treasures Beneath' which had come from imagination after playing with my daughters, talking of tales of mermaids, selkies and underwater adventures. This shot off to a new home quite quickly after being finished, so I didn't spend much time with it, but the idea stuck with me. I've wanted since to explore again the notions of what might lie under the ocean, briefly glimpsed and enchantingly enticing...

'Treasures Beneath' 16 x 20" acrylic on canvas, August 2011 (sold).

I had a large canvas in stock in the studio, waiting for a project. I love working large more than anything, but due to constraints of space and storage (and, to be fair, the state of the economy and wondering if folk really have the cash for such large extravagances) I tend not to allow myself to work big too often. I thought I'd let myself have fun with it though for this series - it's 30 x 40" so reaches my shoulder almost (I'm only tiny). I'd work even bigger if there was a way I could justify it!

'Treasures Beneath 2' came about after scrubbing out and painting over pretty much the whole thing at least once in full, and partially a few times over too - but I'm happy with the final result. It's fairly powerful - but I wanted to get that feel of the powerful ocean (the others so far have gone more towards the ethereal).

'Treasures Beneath 2' 30 x 40" acrylic on canvas.

Treasures Beneath 3 is so far a work in progress, I'm not 100% sure about it so have set it apart for a while...

Treasures Beneath 4 is a little 8 x 10" canvas that was done in between working on TB #2, just because I needed to focus on something else.

'Treasures Beneath 5' 8 x 10" acrylic on canvas.

TB #5 (excuse the short hand!) was a 36 x 12" canvas I had stacked in the corner of the studio, previously half started as a completely different painting which I'd given up on, I obliterated the colours and just used the existing surface textures to suggest where I might go with the new, ocean-appropriate colours. I'm really pleased with how it came together - you can spot a few warm-colour hints poking through from the previous painting, and I added some subtle red highlights too to play on this.

'Treasures Beneath 5' 36 x 12" acrylic on canvas.

The sixth painting was a fun experiment that I'd been waiting to try for a while... I often paint using rags, bubble wrap, bits of plastic, scrunched paper bags, etc but I'd never laid down a whole initial layer of paint using screwed up plastic. It's desperately messy but I found allows you to move the paint in a way you just can't with a brush / palette knife / paper / rags. There were some area's I wasn't totally happy with at the end, where the paint had missed or I felt the colour / tone wasn't quite as I'd like, but these were easily sorted by applying glazes to bring it all together and to a nice finish - as did adding some metallic paint.

'Treasures Beneath 6' 20 x 24" acrylic on canvas.

The last TB painting I've finished so far, number seven, came from a desire to stay fully within the cool side of the spectrum - I'm not sure it quite worked that way as the colour I was finally happy with having mixed for the first layer on the canvas has quite a bit of cadmium red in it. Nevertheless, it worked. There's quite a bit of surface texture under the paint so I decided to keep the mark making quite simple and let this play through.

'Treasures Beneath 7' 12 x 12" acrylic on canvas.

I've a couple more canvases on the go just now in the studio, so I shall see where they go and post an update in a few days...

Wish me Luck, I'm Going In!

Gosh I've not blogged in an age... Time is speeding fast just now, I'm about to enter possibly my busiest patch ever - which is just fantastic, but also a little daunting! Ill tell you a little about what's been happening, and what's happening next...

Christmas with the family was lovely. A few weeks before I finished my last commission of 2011, this ruined croft house, which went down well as a surprise festive gift, I'm pleased to say!

'Wildreness Ruin, Strathmore' Mixed media on paper, 20 x 14" (commission, sold).

I also finished my last paintings of the year - an abstract inspired by the fairy lights I hung around my gilt hall mirror as part of my Christmas decorations, and a megalithic landscape featuring the stones at Glengorm, Mull.

'Fairy Lights and mirror' acrylic on canvas 16 x 20" (currently being exhibited in the Winter Gallery, An Talla Solais - available).

'Kissed by wind, stones, Glengorm, Mull' 16 x 20" acrylic on canvas (available).

As we moved into the new year, I managed to catch myself up with the work I started after visiting the Stoneworks Early Architecture project (see my blog post here), and finished these two pieces.

'Broch 2' acrylic on canvas,12 x 32" (available)

'Broch 1' mixed media on canvas, 20 x 20"

In mid-January I took a jaunt over to Ullapool to take up an exciting opportunity to exhibit in An Talla Solais' new 'Winter Gallery'. It's clever use of resources, which sees one of the boat trip booking booths that are normally found on the harbour front during the Summer pressed into seasonal use as an additional gallery space. I was interested to see how one could use the space to hang wall based work in an unusual way, and hung a selection of my colourful abstract works. 'Colour Makes Me Happy' is on until 19th February.

Another day, another abstract... I got an idea stuck in my head for a week or so after listening to the Laura Marling song 'Failure' quite a lot in the car, and had to exorcise it onto canvas. It's about those nuggets of pleasure, fulfillment, hope or happiness that can pepper a spell of depression or sadness...

'You'll Smile Again' 16 x 20" acrylic on canvas (available).

This one I just finished the other day (for something that's in the works in the next few months but isn't totaly conformed yet, so I won't tempt fate). It's a revisit to my Orkney work, taking paintings I did there (sheltering behind the back of the car from the wind and rain) at the Bay of Skaill (beside Skara Brae) and taking elements of the landscape / seascape of that area into abstract form.

'Bay of Skaill, Winter, Abstract' 20 x 20" mixed media on canvas.

February starts with a bang, with the first day of 28 drawings Later - a project encouraging people to draw every day for the month of February and post their work to Facebook. It's good practice and sounds like a lot of fun, so I am sharpening my pencils and getting out my ink in readiness.

The next thing on the calendar is a week painting trip to the Isle of Lewis to study the stones of the Callanish, and do some landscape work. I'm leaving the family at home and travelling with a friend for company, so it's a bit of a road trip - fingers crossed for no trouble with storms and cancelled ferries! The best work from this trip will be going to Inchmore Gallery, where I'm delighted to be exhibiting as part of the Spring Exhibition (more on that in a later post).

'Lustre' at An Talla Solais & The Market Street Collective

Wow, where has the last week gone? Last Monday I was off on a merry jaunt to the West Coast with my good friend Katy Kitchenham (of Timespan, heritage and arts centre in Helmsdale) to catch 'Lustre', the latest members show at An Talla Solais, Ullapool. This morning I wake to snow and more snowing, so glad we made the trip last week and not today - because we would have missed a treat!

An Talla Solais was set up in 2003/4 as an arts initiative aiming to provide gallery space for contemporary art and crafts. A couple of years later the committee and artist community pulled a staggering fundraising stunt and were able to open the current centre, based in Ullapool's old doctors surgery. The building currently holds rented out artists studios, gallery space, offices, a community room used for various classes and events, as well as the new Market Street Collective shop (more of that later).

I've only been a member of An Talla Solais for less than a year, but it had been on my radar for some time as both a place where 'interesting stuff happened' and as a group of creative souls who were really progressive, producing really interesting, fresh, inventive work. I live a 70 mile drive away from Ullapool and felt a bit sad that I couldn't join in, but when I discovered they took membership from all over, as far as Edinburgh and Glasgow, I signed right up. I don't get to visit or help out as much as I would like, but I'm very proud, in a very tiny tenuous way, to be associated with something so dynamic and exciting!

Taking of dynamic, 'Lustre' certainly was! My first impression walking through into the gallery space was a contrast of angular and soft forms - at first I was greeted with vibrant and sculptural textiles and beautiful turned wood, and then with stone, gravel, perspex, wire, rough worked and wild driftwood...

Highlights for me were Charlotte Watters' tiny silver cup, so delicate you felt it shouldn't be touched by human hand. Both Katy and I were drawn to Florence Jamieson's beautiful terracotta glazed platter with a cat and twinkling stars. Eireann Strange's tiny patchwork boxes definitely demanded several looks, wondering at the tiny patient stitches.

Bridget Ramsey's three pieces involved perspex objects distressed with ink or embellished with writing in clever ways which involved transparent layering. This was particularly interesting to me - as was John Mcintyre's 'An Hour Before Dawn', which involved a wooden frame with a delicate interlacing of thin wire and seed beads within it, giving the impression of a star chart or star scattered sky - because they both sat close to ideas I've been firming up for 3D work I'll be making during and after my trip to the Isle of Lewis in February. So the trip was worth it to me to experience those artists wonderful work alone.

The wall based 'part two' of the members show will be taking part in the Early Spring at Eden Court, Inverness, and I'm looking forward to entering some work to that myself - although with so much talent involved with An Talla Solais there's always a real danger ones humble efforts might get squeezed off the available wall space. Somehow I wouldn't mind though, when you are treated to such inspiring and glorious stuff!

A second reason for taking the trip over to Ullapool on a windy Winter day was to check out the new The Market Street Collective shop within An Talla Solais' premises. Such a clever idea, concived that to help man exhibitions without needing to pull in tens of volunteers to gallery sit, and also allow the centre to be open for longer and on more days of the week - as well as providing a extra way for local artists and craftspeople to market and sell thier work outwith An Tall Solais member or special exhibitions. The Collective have formed themselves up as a separate group to An Talla Solais, and in return for use of the room, will donate 10% of takings to An Talla Solais - much needed revenue for the organisation. The current run is a pilot, but hopefully should roll on into next year and beyond. I can't help but think what a logical and brilliant solution this is for all parties involved!

I must say, the shop is just visually stunning! The Collective have worked hard to not only source and stock from amongst the members some very, very high quality work, but also have taken such a tender care in the display of it that you simply can't help but be uplifted by spending time there. And of course an uplifting, warm, inviting shopping experience is what makes you want to open that purse and spend, so this aesthetic integrity alone bodes well for a long and fruitful future for the shop.

The selection of items on offer is impressively large for a small space - greetings cards, mugs, breathtaking silver jewellery, beautiful handwoven scarves and throws that scream 'glossy interiors mag', striking paintings, accessories made with Harris Tweed, earthy yet stunning pottery, wordy witty screen prints...

I do hope the collective are going to be working on an e-commerce site and be offering mail order in future, as I really do think what they have created has a unique selling point which exsists both within and outwith it's physical location and relationship with An Talla Solais and Ullapool. Something curated with such care, marketed direct from the makers, straddling the honest / earthy and ethereally beautiful deserves to be shared with the widest possible audience!

My only regret during my visit was that I was just one present off completing my Xmas shopping, having promissed myself a non-panicing December... Next year - and I hope the collective does push forward into the next Festive Season - I know exactly where I will be coming to stock up!

Abstracts

'Scapa Bay Abstract 3'
40 x 40"
Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas.

For one reason and another I seem to have shifted recently into a phase of painting a lot of abstracts. Ever since I took up brushes again I have produced abstract work, but I think only now I'm truly understanding why I do this...

I think there is a definite truth to the thought that keeps occurring to me, which is that when I am painting abstracts it is the most authentically 'me' as an artist that I can possibly be.

I actually really like this feeling. It's a kind of freedom. I know whatever I create, even if I'm not absolutely happy with it, it comes from somewhere very genuine and honest. There's a certain ease and grace about that.

'Orkney Held Me Close and Blew Me Away'
24 x 24"
Diptych - two 24 x 12” canvases.

Acrylic on canvas.

I have always admired landscapes, and I felt for a long time that I wanted to paint them. That was a huge ambition as an artist, to become a competent landscape painter. In order to do that I began to learn this complex language of composition, mark making, colour use, depth, perspective, that allows me to make that type of work. I am a student. I work. I learn. I improve. I evolve - but it's a dance, and the landscape leads, with me following and trying to keep up.

Studio Collage Collection of CD Sized Artworks
for Inchmore Gallery

I remember seeing my first abstracts as a child, and then later studying Kandinsky at school, and just feeling this kind of soaring, bubbling over, exploding feeling of awe, and amazement, and emotions - and belonging. As a kid you usually feel a belonging to a family, a place, a school, a band, a sport (and of course I did), but I also felt a belonging to abstract art - because those works expressed in physical form what the inside of my brain looked like. My amazement was that someone had hard wired inside *my very being* and extracted my inner languages and made them real. It's kind of like someone playing you a video recording of your imaginary friend, whom of course nobody else knows or can even see.

Of course all that is in some ways a sweeping, emotionally driven overstatement - but you know, most of it isn't... Whilst of course there cannot be one universal visual language, the language of talking in colour, form, texture, pattern, space, tempo, contrast is universal I think. I guess it's rather like saying I know a person is speaking some sort of English, it's not *my* sort of English, I'm not quite getting the dialect and the intonation, the references are a mystery to me, and they have different views, but the fact they are speaking English at all, that makes sense. I understand it without effort or conscious thought - whereas my French is a learned thing, and I can only speak and read a little, and I have to put a lot of effort into communicating that way.

'Soft and Hard'
16 x 16"
Acrylic on canvas.

In recent years I became aware of Synesthesia, which as Wikipedia puts it is...

...is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

Synesthetes might involuntarily connect particular colours with letters of the alphabet, or experience certain taste sensations when hearing sounds, or find sounds create various visual responses... It's something I'd really like to learn a lot more about.

To me emotions always have had certain colours and textures (these do change a little sometimes with time). Places occasionally have an association in my mind with colours or shapes. Sound and music have always been experienced in a visual way, like animations inside my mind - music is very beautiful and has shapes, colours, textures, physical movement... If I hear a lot of sound I feel quite overwhelmed and experience what I've always thought of as 'white out' in my mind, everything becomes blank and the visuals that usually play out in my mind disappear. Time I experience as a 3D space which I can move about and view from different angles depending on what data I wish to access.

My inner world speaks in texture, colour, movement, space, light and dark...

'Ocean'
8 x 8"
Mixed media on canvas.

Of course what may be considered 'true synesthesia' gets a bit jumbled up with more learned ideas, like what objects or colours or shapes might be 'male' or 'female', red is stop, green is go, and no doubt some associations may have been formed by childhood experiences. Perhaps I had a book with coloured days of the week which formed all my Wednesdays into 'blue' in my minds eye, perhaps that's not real synesthesia at all? A calendar where Saturday was always marked in red? I know it's been proven that people tend to associate 'sharp' sounding words with angular shapes, etc. Never the less, it's all part of the rich tapestry of information, memory, experience and association that I draw upon when creating art.

'Self Suspended in the Universe'
16 x 20"
Acrylic on canvas.

When I create abstracts there is always a 'process'. This changes depending on the subject matter, if the painting is a commission, or for a certain project, where the inspiration is coming from. Some of how I pull together a painting does come from the inner parts of my mind, some of it is quite subconscious, but other elements of the process are quite methodical and consciously thought through.

Sometimes certain colours (sometimes those from more representational work I am working on) excite me and I feel moved to take them off, on another canvas, to somewhere more abstract. Sometimes I'm inspired by shapes, or music, or the landscape or something else in nature, events in the news... I tend to get down rough sketches, or a plan of colours I want to use - some sort of basic building blocks. From that I will make connections. So for instance if I am painting something based around the idea of 'love' I will start to make associations, some of which I guess are learned and universal - I might start jotting down colour swatches in reds and pinks, say - and others will come from somewhere less obvious - for example 'love' to me is always circles (did I get this from copying a lot of Celtic knot work I wonder, or somewhere else). Some elements of the painting will simply come from what I think makes the other elements work together, what 'finishes' the painting off.

'The Riots'
16 x 36"
Acrylic on canvas.

I rarely plan a whole abstract down on paper in advance of starting painting - I've long since given up beating myself up about this (I used to feel it was very un-studious and slapdash), the truth is I can usually see a kind of 75% complete version of my original vision for the painting in my mind eye, so I kind of know where I am headed. This gives me enough to plan out the size and shape of canvas I need - which fairly often will get compromised a little according to what canvases I have in stock, I find it generally better to get onto an abstract ASAP whilst it's all fresh in my head. I usually try to make a start within three days, which often isn't a big enough window of time to get anywhere and buy a special canvas. If it's the right project though I'll wait, and in the mean time keep jotting down ideas and sketching things out to keep it as fresh as I can... My ideal is to begin right away, the moment an idea comes.

'Colour Makes me Happy'
40 x 40"
Acrylic on canvas.

Often the finished painting has drifted away to a lesser or greater degree from the original vision I had - but that's fine, I really believe that a painting is a journey and an experience and that the process of painting can be absolutely as important as sticking rigidly to some plan or initial vision. It's nice when things evolve on the easel. There has to be some link back to the original inspiration though - or the thing has to have grown from that 'parent idea' into a child that can stand on it's own two feet. At the end of the day the painting has to look good, hang together visually, be something I feel has a sense of completeness.

'Moine Thrust'
Triptych - three 8 x 8" canvases.
Overall size 8 x 24 (hung without spacing).

When painting I always think creating an abstract is like some sort of dance. It's the dancers movements and steps on the canvas. So I am always looking at the individual elements and the tempo they have, the way they flow one to the other, and where they lead around the canvas. Individual areas of canvas have to work, like the sections of a dance, but the whole picture of where the dance started, moved to and ended has to work too. And the dancers need to have considered all areas of the dance floor. Each hand movement or step needs to have been precise and well executed, but also they need to become part of a stronger, better whole.

'Floral Note'
20 x 20"
Acrylic on canvas.

I have no idea really how others judge my abstracts. I have had people say they feel a real connection with certain pieces, and that is such an awesome thing! There is no doubt that when someone views an abstract work all sorts of subjective things within them comes to play. I can intend the elements or whole as something, but it's entirely up to the viewer if they agree (if they have some advance clue of what I was thinking) or have their own interpretation. I do get a huge kick out of the thought that whilst, as the artist, I explore my inner world, my views, the things that move me, that inspire me, that get me excited or make me sad, each viewer of any of my paintings goes through exactly the same process. So many truths! I'm not sure how much the art buying public gets excited about abstract painting, I feel blessed that I do sell some of this work, even through a recession, but for me abstract painting is never going to be a fully commercial activity. Whilst I'm happy to let these babies go out into the world, I could no more stop painting abstracts as I could chop off my own hand. And thank goodness for that!

'Icons Ascending'
Triptych - three 10 x 14" canvases.
Acrylic on canvas.