Friday 26 April 2013

More Drawing....

‘They look too rushed-you can’t take those to the gallery’, my wife said as I showed her my new drawings on Saturday, just as I was about to take them to the gallery. ‘You’ve got to think, ‘Are people going to want to buy those?’ Somewhat defeated ( I never think about whether someone is going to want to buy them when I make something) I took them back to the studio, pinned them back up and over the next few days spent many hours refining them, and pushing them much further, trying to get greater depth in the colours, and also simplifying them. I tended to work across all of them at the same time. I also made some new ones such as the one above, which I am pleased with. This is a view of an enormous pile of pallets behind a wall seen and reflected in the canalside.

In my defense (your honour), it is not so much that they were rushed, but more that they were my first attempts to develop some new work from my recent trip to the motorway outside Oldbury. In my experience, it can take a long time to ‘key’ into ways of translating the imagery into drawing, and their rough quality reflected this. Also, working to order for the gallery, is just not something I’m used to so I felt quite a bit of pressure too in what was already a stressful time at work last week during an Ofsted visit. Still, at the end of the day, the missus was right as usual, and when I took them to the gallery on Wednesday I felt much happier with them. They seemed pleased too.
It was good to get back to the studio, and sweep up all the pastel dust, but strange and unsettling to have completed such a chunk of work, and it to have it disappeared from the walls no sooner than it was made…



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