Giving up sugar
It is now 39 days since I last ate any sugar – chocolate, cakes, sweets, biscuits, sugar itself, etc. And far from feeling deprived, I actually feel liberated!
Perhaps, unconsciously, I am giving up things beginning with ‘S’ as I stopped using shampoo to wash my hair in September, instead using plain or rosemary infused water, and occasionally a pinch of baking powder.
In studio by 9am
Yes, most of the time, and it feels great!
Writing more reviews
I have written several which can be viewed at the link below, and really enjoyed the experience. It has caused me to think on a deeper level about artists making work today, printing and painting in particular, and how these new concerns and trends might relate to my own drawing practice.
“What I see in all the work is a sort of anti-painting; often colourful, sometimes grim, featuring out-of-context motifs, small windows of intense drawing, elements of wall-paper type decoration, out-of-focus objects and figures; and, occasionally, paint [usually gloss] thrown smartly across the surface of the canvas; a definite blurring between reality – the object, the figure – decoration, and a sort of grimey, plasticine-coloured abstraction.”
Extract from my February review on Phoebe Unwin –
More drawing
Yes, yes, yes and being fed by seeing more shows. Thinking and writing about them.
Walking & Talking
I do this three or four times a week with artist and writer friends. It is a great opportunity to discuss books we are reading and shows we have seen etc, as well as escaping out into the open away from being desk and computer-bound.
New Projects
Towner: I will be showing a new drawing installation entitled: Silhouette in the East Sussex Open at the Towner art gallery in April. [Left: image detail from Silhouette]Jerwood: I am currently creating a new series drawings for The Jerwood Project Space which will be shown in July/August 2011. The idea is based on the traditional still life with a modern twist.
Core Gallery: Excited to be co-curating an exhibition called: Home at Core Gallery, Deptford with Rosalind Davis. I had the idea back in November, suggested it to RD, and off we cantered, with no backward glance. It has been a valuable time of new ideas and collaboration, an incredibly stimulating and enjoyable experience – particularly, the give and take, and slow build of ideas when you are learning to work with someone new. What has also been highly gratifying is that all the artists we wanted to work with, have come back and agreed to take part. Susan Collis, Delaine Le Bas, Rose Wylie, Lucy Austin, Peter Davies, Rich White, Kate Murdoch, Emily Speed, Freddie Robbins, Graham Crowley
Best Shows: Painting – Phoebe Unwin – Wilkinson, Vyner Street - until 6 March
Also really enjoyed The Salon Photo Prize at Matt Roberts Arts, Vyner St, until 26th February.
Reading: Fiction: Just starting We had it so good by Linda Grant. Non-fiction: At Home by Bill Bryson
Listening: When I am drawing Radio 4 and also, Radio 7 [soon to be renamed Radio 4 plus]. At the moment I am enjoying brilliant readings and adaptations of Middlemarch by George Eliot and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
Looking forward to: High-abstract – an exhibition by abstract critical, a new organisation supporting abstract art.
This means I am going to have to think about, read about, and probably write about abstract art – something new for me. Already, I have reached for Alan Bowness’s compact tome Modern European Art* for a short refresher course on the birth of abstract art. The press release says: An exhibition of high-ambition, high-complexity abstract painting and sculpture 1960–2010.The exhibition will feature key works by artists Alan Davie, John Hoyland, Fred Pollock, Alan Gouk, Anne Smart and Robin Greenwood. A catalogue will be available with essays by Mel Gooding, Robin Greenwood and Sam Cornish.
High-abstract: Poussin Gallery, London – 11 Feb – 12 March
ends
.* Modern European Art by Alan Bowness [London: Thames & Hudson, 1972]
