Alternative Creative Juices!

So the freeze has set in deep throughout Kent. Country Lore tells us that the best recipe for Sloe Gin is made with sloes left on the bush for the first harsh frost. So braving the snow we went out along our hedgerow and picked a couple of kilos of the little purple frosted gems.

Tempted by further words of folkloric wisdom I am making sloe vodka and sloe schnapps this year. Any excuse to escape the cold of the studio. So the creative juices flowing for me presently are white spirits... (hic)

For those interested the Recipe I work to is:

• 1 litre of gin (generic own brand is adequate! but be aware checkout operators do look alarmed if you buy 30 litres of the stuff!)
• 250 grams of sugar
• 250 grams of sloes, either those picked early and pricked with a hawthorn, left on the bush for the first frost, or picked and frozen in the deep freeze, or picked and hit with a mallet.
• you can add caraway seeds, licorice sticks, cloves, black pepper corns or cinnamon for a spiced alternative.

I will be serving a 2004 vintage of pricked season end sloes on Friday at the show, so mail me for an invite.

Let it Snow... Let it Snow!

The weekend, and this morning again, saw snow fall on our little part of Kent. A depth of white silence covers previously farrowed hills and smaller vegetable beds of swelling onion sets and next seasons garlic.

With the warmth of the studio I am able to look out and feel smug at the dropping temperatures. Like Canute I am abating the creeping low temperatures at the door by means of oil radiator, the life models friend the fan-heater and 10kw from my body heat. However the work is stubborn in it's curing parameters and I find some surfaces still wet. Not put off, rather wishing a chance of climactic conditions to cause accident or a eureka moment I make some gesso and commit to layering up some studio collection squares. The white surface of the gesso smothers the french linen as the snow does to the pebbled driveway. Boot prints, dog hops, skips and jumps to avoid long contact in the depths of the white stuff and bird toes are all the marks upon that surface I can see.

As I start to inscribe the surface of the gesso....

Will this or the wet work be ready for Friday? Invites still on offer for the Private View if you mail me or direct message me on twitter.

Chilly Studio

I return to the studio today after several days of accounting, (Yes it will be posted on the 30th November, Mr HMRC if you read this) and working between Essex and London. I have been offered an artist practitioner role in a school in Essex in the new year, but more of that in another post.

So back to the studio; I find the work I left last week, still not dry. Forgetting the curing time retards with colder, neigh freezing weather, our pond has an inch of ice covering it. So working with the magic of fan heaters I attempt to thaw the studio and finish the work for the show on Friday.

See you in SOHO folks.

Small and Affordable

With a little '@home' show coming up in the next 10 days, time is at a premium. I am having to complete the tiling in the bathroom, so guests have a reasonably pleasant trip to the smallest room of a very small flat. But it is all about the location! or so they say. Charing Cross Road in the heart of SOHO in London's West End. So if you are planning to come to the show you can also;

• Check out the Christmas lights in Oxford Street, Regent Street, Seven Dials (Covent Garden) and my favourites in Carnaby Street
• Book to go ice skating at Somerset House
• German Christmas Market along the Southbank
• Also take in the East London Design show and pick up gift ideas or take a trip south of the river to Cockpit Arts in Deptford
• Lovers can go illuminate the tree in Covent Garden in an interactive project called Merry Kissmas
• and those with kids can pet a Reindeer on the 4th December in Covent Garden Piazza (not the flat)

Is there any excuse not to come into town and come to my show?

Being the flat is so small, work on show will be from the 10x10cm studio collection ranges and small mounted gesso on linen colour studies (as shown in image).

New Tondos (cracked and smooth) will be on the wall along with a selection from the 'crater' series popular at the recent art fairs.

A new earthy palette, of ochre and sepia, small studies and sketches will be present straight from the studio and the trip to Norway. Landscapes and the archaeology of marks prevail.

If you would like an invite to the show, mail me.

Inspired and Informed

I have just spent 7 days and long nights (between 2 and 4 hours of daylight) at sea from Kirekness on the Russian Norwegian border along the coastal route on the working ship Ms Nordstjernen within the Hurtegruten line.

An opportunity to be surrounded by amazing scenary, passage on a form of travel from a bygone day (our boat was from the 1950's) and soak up the breadth of the experience through every sense and ones intellect.

The colours, the scale, form and marks within the landscape were fuel to an ideas stove that will forge new marks upon my surfaces in good time. Images captured digitally and sketched will be reflected upon in the studio over coming weeks. Along with a new insight into my process generously offered by a fellow traveller.

A chance conversation onboard ship, with a chap who turned out to be a colour chemist of some note. He put the stripes in a famous toothpaste and the green mint bubbles in a chocolate bar. I gained some valuable information from the science and chemical and molecular theory behind how I work with ink on and within the gesso surfaces and how/why casein from milk seals and polishes the work.

On the back of the ship, in a lounge befitting an episode of Poirot, I received a chemistry lesson and instructions on creating new surfaces that will offer greater potential for the marks I make to penetrate the surface on a physically deeper, chemical level. This is incredibly exciting and will really push the rationale for my work with a rigorous scientific research enquiry.

Calling other colour chemists and artists interested in opening a dialogue. Get in touch!

Thank you to Malcolm, I never got your surname, but if you read this your passion for your subject was appreciated.

It's HUGE!

Have just taken receipt of a two part architects plans chest form local firm Roger Joyce Associates. Thank you to Roger for bringing it up on Saturday evening in the dark.

The new addition to the studio will provide much needed storage for my drawings and colour studies on stretched linen and gesso. When located in the corner they will also provide much more needed horizontal surfaces and a work area able to take a small printing press where upon I can start dry point etching and collagraphs. Watch this space and flickr for the new work to come from the studio.