On a roll....'The Gaze' in The West Midlands Open 2014

 

'The Gaze', oil on canvas, 210 x 150cms, 2013

….And today I heard that one of my paintings has been selected for the West Midlands Open 2014, a biennial collaboration between Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Wolverhampton Art Gallery, showcasing the best the region has to offer from practicing artists.  It has become a regular feature on the region’s cultural calendar since it’s first exhibition in 2006, and I’m lucky enough to have been selected twice, in 2006 and 2008. This year It was selected by Birmingham artist Barbara Walker and curator Zoe Lippett from New Art Gallery Walsall.

My painting ‘The Gaze’ was selected which I’m so pleased about for a couple of reasons. It’s great to be in this exhibition, which will be seen by so many visitors in a very prestigious venue, and on a more personal level it’s a nice validation to have one of my more recent pieces selected which have only been exhibited once at Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery in January in my exhibition ‘Black Highway’. I think some of these paintings are much more unusual and experimental and you never know how they might be received. This is how I felt about ‘The Gaze’ in January, but actually it turned out to be one of the most popular paintings in the show, which encouraged me to therefore put it forward for the West Midlands Open. 

Phew, I’m on a roll in these last few weeks….