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.

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!