Happy Holidays

Best wishes to all over the festive season.

See you in the New Year, if not through a little posting in the in-between time.

Environmental Art

Being fortunate to only pick up a slight delay on our flight back from the Netherlands, Amsterdam Schipol Airport to London City, yesterday. I was delighted to watch and be captivated by the skill and grace and resulting snow and ice drawings that the runway clearing team were creating for a bemused audience of weary travelers.

An act of necessity. Clearing the several inches of snow and compacted ice for passenger safety. However there seemed a delight in all of those watching not simply of the reassurance that they will be getting home now. But of a joy of witnessing proficiency in a skill, a servicing of a collective need with a generosity of showmanship; like a main stage Christmas ballet.

The ploughs, sweepers, heavy plant machinery danced across the taxi ways and circled amongst flashing lights in tighter and tighter rotations, circles-of-eight until mounds, causeways and marks in the subtle shades of greying whites revealed an environmental sculpture on the stage.

Can You See The Dogs?

A couple of images from the '@home' show. It has been a successful and fun venture midst decorating and festive madness, and I will definitely do it again and maybe with other artists/makers. Watch this space...

I hung work all around the three rooms of the flat and even the bathroom did not escape a selected mono-chromatic hang!

The dogs were on best behaviour and exhausted by all the attention they got.

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.

All Quiet.... But, for how long?

Following the mad (and very enjoyable) couple of weeks that was the lead up to Brighton Art Fair followed shortly after the inaugural Palace Art Fair. Both of which were personal successes and fun, it was great to be a part of such a well run event. However it is nice to be back at the barn and able to breathe in the changes in seasons that surrounds us.

Some respite is being permitted by self and then back to work. Ideas from conversations, sketches made in between conversations, comments and enquiries...

'don't you want to make sculpture again?'

have left an internal voice resonating in my head. So with some new materials ordered and days blocked out in the ever filling diary. I am back in the practice of booking studio time and making this non-negotiable for other events, meetings with clients or admin or simply coffee and cake. The discipline feels good.

This new work will be shown in December at the '@home' show in SOHO, London. Between the 3rd and 5th December. HOLD THE DATES

PAF10

Palace Art Fair is over, look forward to next year!

Less work has returned to the studio so that is a good sign. Enthused by the conversations and sales, I am recovering for a day or two then set to start some new work for an '@home' show in central London towards the end of the year.

And for those interested in the Sculpture I did before. I will be posting some images up on Flickr shortly.

New work may include three dimensional forms too! so watch the various spaces on the web.

Palace Art Fair

The studio has once again become populated by work on every horizontal surface drying between marks made and glazes. In anticipating of the Palace Art Fair.

Informed by the conversations I had at Brighton Art Fair, the work is responding to my reactions to the visitors feedback. To the allusion of depth my richly layered work plays with and the spartan qualities of the reductive work. Where marks are made and worked towards erasing them, leaving but a trace of the ghost like original or an archeology of my mark making process.

I will be present on Stand 9 at Fulham Palace from the 8th- 10th October. I look forward to seeing you on stand.

Brighton Art Fair 2010

Brighton Art Fair 2010 is over...

Thanks go out to Jon, Sarah, Anne-Marie and their team for ensuring another successful event.

It was a chance for me to show the larger work that has been percolating in the studio over the summer and to have the ever valuable conversations with fellow exhibitors and to engage with visitors. The fair was rammed at the Private View, with a 'one in; one out' policy operating on the door and work seemed to really shift from the hall over the three days.

For me it was a great weekend, sales and commissions were up and was good seeing previous buyers and new folk step up to the stand and comment on the new developments. I am encouraged to get back to the studio to complete and start replacement work ready for Palace Art Fair in three weeks. See you there!

The Wood Shed!

Tight for space in the studio, with work drying on every horizontal surface, I am forced into the wood shed to glaze and finish the last couple of pieces for next week.

I am on target to complete all work by Sunday and photograph it on Monday. Ready for a NEW Gallery page to be loaded on Dawlton Barn website to coincide with the Private View on Thursday in Brighton. Keep an eye on the site for new completed work!

All work seen on this blog and my website are for sale or approach me to see more work or to talk about the commissioning process.

Planning the Stand!

Taking a break from the surrounds and smell of the studio, I pour myself a glass of wine and sketch out to reasonable scale my thoughts towards the layout of Stand 2 at Brighton Art Fair next Thursday. Taking a mix of my new large work and familiar small delights, that are my studio obsessional pieces, it is reassuring that keeping a uniformity of size enables the shifting of a variety of squares around fixed walls easier than irregularity.

A partial premature delight in curation comes when the pinning and moving and re-pinning of thumbnail computer prints upon and around a cardboard model starts to bring a cohesion and dialogue to this year's work (not showing you an image of that, you will have to come to the Corn Exchange over the weekend to see).

Sketches

Strewn across the studio floor are what have become sketches, studies and experiments on paper. The immediacy of committing to paper is extraordinarily liberating for a someone so engaged in the process of constructing my usual surfaces of panel, french linen and the obsessive many layers of hand-made gesso. I can go: "straight to it", with less investment in the surface I am less precious about the marks I make.

The sketches are stand alone pieces and also inform the work ongoing. I am mindful to take the lessons from working on paper and am also drawn to think about... 'what if I made my own paper?'

Something I have not done for many years since constructing paper pulp sculptures in Sheffield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Off to research how I might do this again. But it will have to wait until after Brighton. ONLY 8 days to go!

Tondos

Round paintings. Any comments??

Apologies for quality of images, posted from iPhone

Developments...

Studio work can often feel like one step forward and two steps back, seduced in one direction by the process and 'happy accidents' on the surface it is easy to be hi-jacked by this spontaneous freedom with a loss of intention.

This week I have chosen to reign back a couple of images built up from many layers of ink and glazes, this often incurs the editing back of marks and revisiting the colour ways. Whilst I relish in the ambiguities that my images evoke, there is a point of clarity where I start and where I conclude, the in between is a balance of control and play.

Committing to Big!

Having had some studio visits from friends and colleagues recently. I have been reminded of the need to engage with your work as a viewer and not just as the person who makes it. It is easy for thinking to become contained within the 'studio references' and not be wider, bolder, connected, multi-layered and bigger than intention and process.

Imagining myself as a viewer approaching my work, I was challenged to not just give an intimate up close selective experience. But rather ask: 'What if the work was present and greater in scale?' the impact being physical and visceral as well as ocular.

So be it.... I started getting bigger.

The series of 50x 50 cm gesso panels will be taken to Brighton Art Fair along with several 1 metre sqaures. Larger work can be seen in London at the Palace Art Fair in October, where I will have a bigger stand to take the bigger work.

Layers and Glazes

Few more shots from the studio as work develops. The daily series are accumulating a critical mass or colour, texture and references.

Apologies for quality of images, posted from iPhone

Work in Progress....

A couple more studio shots of the progress I am making with completing new work ahead of forthcoming shows.

Studio Shots

Work is well underway for Brighton Art Fair in a couple of weeks time. You will be able to find me on Stand 2, just as you enter the Corn Exchange to the left.

I will be showing new work from the daily studio collection (the small 10x10cm ones!) Along with larger work. Watch out for the 1 metre square, the 1.5 metre square and the departure from square format.... a whopping 2 metre x 1 metre panel, stretched French linen and gesso.

I have some spare tickets to the Art Fair, so if you would like to come see the work you have been following on this blog, then drop me an email.

Drawings in Sand

The One That Got Away

I took a break from work for some R&R and sun in Spain. And as ever ended up working however some of it in my sketchbook on the balcony, working some ideas through for new works in the studio upon my return.

As I was in the throws of creative inspiration a gust of warm light Mediterranean wind took the one I was working on off from the ledge up, up and into the trees. Where it remained. Staying at the Hotel Romantic in Sitges, known for its' own art collection of local and regional artisans. Can I now say, 'Work hanging in an international art collection'?

Lots of sketches and colour studies made, so keep an eye on my flickr page for new work as it evolves ahead of seeing it in the flesh at Brighton Art Fair in September. Contact me for invitation or ticket details.

Landscapes

Done a fair bit of traveling by train the past week or so. I took the west coast route and saw the changing landscapes out of a Virgin train window and was inspired again, as you cross the borders at the numbers and grace and presence that wind turbines have, and the collective beauty of them en mass, as well as the singular homesteads through the Cumbria section that are doing their bit.

So what is the collective noun for wind turbines?

I could not find the answer online, or think of anything witty right now, but had fun looking at this site. (Above studies from the daily studio 'one a day' series, indian ink on gesso on linen and milk glazed, 10x10cm)

Started reading Patrick Gale's 'Notes from an Exhibition', that I picked up in Foyles from the art and literature point of sale display, on the journey up to Scotland and I hope to conclude it on the journey to Cornwall this weekend. How fitting? as it positions itself in this particular geographic and relative movement in art. So let us see what inspires, falls into place from the end third of the book and having the experience of the sea, coastline and light that these long days can offer.

Time for a new sketchbook.