Coming Down...

I found myself in the studio at 7am with my breakfast the other morning looking at a painting I’d made late the previous evening. It was drying on the floor. I’m pretty excited by it, and feel it marks a slight shift in my thinking away from some of the more recent landscape paintings. These have been concerned with more formal issues centred on colour and mark to express atmosphere and certain feelings, whereas this new one takes some of that but tries to also deal with a particular sense of place.

I’m keen to narrow my focus to deal more with particular, and perhaps more unusual locations. The edges of our urban landscape; places unseen that we may pass each day without really noticing. This painting is based on an oil study I made of a scrappy little traffic island that is always surrounded by teeming traffic that I view everyday from my classroom window. It had some trees that caught my eye with their alignment, colour and narrow shapes.

Yesterday I spent a day whizzing around different places in a transit van around West Bromwich dropping off my ‘Seek My Face’ portrait paintings to various organisations and centres who have been keen to take one permanently. Multistory have helped me once again with contacting the various people and venues involved. The places I went to yesterday included Sandwell Council House, The Public, Charlemont Community Centre, Phoenix Collegiate School (my old school, formerly Menzies High), Friar Park Community Centre (whose choice of painting then sadly proved too big for their space), and Stoney Lane Day Centre. So it was a busy day, but I mainly just dropped off the work. Next week I’m going back to install them, so that will be fun.

I did install the one above though,‘Sara’, at Stoney Lane Day Centre for people with Learning Disabilities. Sara is one of the service users and chose the spot to hang the painting, which is appropriately just outside the art room. Watch this space as the others find a permanent home next week.