Review 2014

The Kitten

This time last year I wrote about being very excited about the year to come as I felt I had discovered what my paintings should be about. I finished the post with "So, this year the aim is to put together a body of work of which I am proud, dealing with how people present themselves." And have I achieved this? Yes.

I am proud of my solo show in August and although I still have a lot of work to do in exploring how we tell stories about ourselves visually I do feel I've made a decent beginning. Thankfully, buyers do seem to agree with me, as almost half of the works from the show have now sold.

Which is terribly encouraging - all the paintings were bigger than I had tried before, and two of them were 3 x 4 ft - so I was working on quite a different scale from previously. Big canvases are clearly in my future.

This was my first solo show, so I had an awful lot to learn, not least how to create a group of work that hangs well together and making sure the paintings were done on time. Through doing this I learnt a process that works well for me where I draw the proposed painting on a smaller scale. On some occasions I also did a colour study to try out options or to see if a bigger version will be possible. Which is very traditional but in my case updated with the use of digital camera - if considering a change if tone or colour I would play around on the computer. But sometimes there is no alternative to doing it in oils.

What else was new? Well, several of the people I painted were folk I had never met before but had volunteered - I was nervous that I couldn't paint someone whom I didn't already know, but fortunately it worked out well which hopefully means that my first commissioned portrait to be done soon will not be a problem.

What else happened this year? Several new galleries have been in touch with me, so I will be showing at various new places next year, which is quite exciting.

So I had quite a good year, unlike Glasgow in general, which suffered greatly in various ways. But onwards and upwards.

RGI Postcard Exhibition

Two Forks

A couple of weeks ago I listed the christmas shows that'll have my work in this december - but I forgot one - the RGI Kelly Gallery Christmas exhibition .
As I was included in the last RGI show, they've asked me to put in a postcard sized work - The Two Forks, above, for sale unframed at £250 along with everyone else's small works. The private view will be next friday (the 5th) from 5 til 7 - the chances of picking up a bargain are fairly high, so I'm disappointed I'll probably miss it - maybe next year I'll declare the last week of november/first of december a holiday and just float around all the openings without having to worry about getting some stuff done - might be fun!