‘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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