'Home Ground'

 

Installation shots of 'Home Ground', Malvern Library Cafe Gallery, May 2022

In May earlier this year I had a solo exhibition, ‘Home Ground’, at Malvern Library where they have a generous exhibition space in the café downstairs. With it just being a space in the café, rather than a traditional gallery, I thought it might be wiser to use the opportunity to hang a lot of my smaller paintings that I don’t have the opportunity to exhibit very often and show a wider range of work, but also with the hope that I may sell a few as these smaller pieces as they are obviously cheaper and therefore might appeal to the casual viewer using the café. 

On the advice of an artist friend, however, who lives in Malvern and had exhibited there herself some years before (which is how I knew of the venue), she thought that with the walls being big and the light good from the skylights above I should exhibit some of my larger paintings instead. I eventually decided to go for broke and hang a range of big and small pieces in a ‘salon’ type hang and ended up showing a lot of work. I was also able to present a wider range of my work and interests in different types of landscape, which was very rewarding. I thought it was the best exhibition of my work I had done to date, despite it not being in a proper gallery setting as such, not that I thank that is all that important these days. 

I’m always on the lookout for different venues that I think might suit my work and exhibitions in galleries can be very hard to come by, unless they are artist-run ones. Commercial galleries can also be very limited in what they show too. The space at Malvern seemed a good opportunity for a few reasons: my friend’s exhibition had looked good there and she had sold lots of work; the space offered me a rare chance to show a large collection of work, and as I make so much which never has the opportunity to be shown, this appealed, and finally, being based in Malvern, a beautiful town with a lot of culture, history and people interested in the arts, I thought the exhibition might attract more of an audience than other exhibitions.  It was also up for 6 weeks, which was great too. 

And all these feelings played out and I ended up selling quite a few paintings, particularly some of the large ones which was a nice surprise. But Malvern has some big houses with big walls where some of these ones would have looked great. And I discovered they did when I delivered them to the house of one of the buyers, who bought two, including my favourite painting in the exhibition, ‘The Scent Of Rain’, a landscape beneath Spaghetti Junction, and she kindly sent me some photographs of them hanging in her home later. Another large one. ‘The Island’, was also sold when I wasn’t there, but I never met this buyer. 

'The Island', oil on canvas, 70 x 90cms, 2022

'The Scent Of Rain', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2021

At the end of the exhibition when I went to take it down, I spent an hour or so looking at the work. I felt a bit unsettled by the paintings, especially as there were so many. As I looked over them, with their painterly gestures and mark-making which are directly applied and all on the surface I became so overwhelmingly aware of my own physical presence, my body, my hands and arms and movement, across all the work. They all seemed as much a portrait of me as of anything else. I guess it may seem an obvious point to some, but nonetheless I found the experience somewhat painful and upsetting, as if the paintings were a mask for my internal self. 

I'll finish this post with these nice photographs from the private view of my wonderful friends and artists, who I've collaborated with a great deal over the years, and have always offered me a great deal of support (top), Hugh, Andy (bottom), Philip and Chris...

The Hours....

oil on panel study, 8 " x 10", current work

I hobble down the long garden to the studio on my crutches each morning, the dog faithfully following me, hoping I will throw the ball, jump precariously up the step into the space, set up my speaker and Bluetooth to either some music (this week: ‘Here It Is- A Tribute to Leonard Cohen (I can’t recommend this enough), and ‘Communication’ by Karl Bartos, former Kraftwerk member, whose 600 page autobiography I’ve just completed (brilliant read) or a Podcast ( lately lots of ‘The Rest Is Politics’ with Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, and my favourite a new run of The Adam Buxton Podcast), and climb up on my high stool to the desk easel, palette and paints set up on the high table, take another reference photo as a starting point, and a fresh, primed small painting panel, and then set to work for a few hours. Once I’m actually safely in the studio it feels like the only thing I can do that easily at the moment, but as it’s painting, that’s not so bad is it? 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current 

In fact, I’ve been painting 2-3 paintings a day these last two weeks and I’m really enjoying it. As I can only work sitting down, I’m forced to work small, but these limits are liberating. As most my paintings start from primary reference photographs but against the limits of time, I’m enjoying the opportunity to dig a lot deeper into these photographs and try and unearth some new ideas, particularly in the ongoing development of my painting language, experimenting, always experimenting. 

oil on panel study, 8" x 10", current

oil on panel study, 8"x10", current

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current

At the moment, I’m hooking into something much 

looser, more abstract, but not abstract, and continually thinking about my use of colour and the light in the paintings. These elements have become much more central in the last 2 years to how I concieve the paintings. I’ve made some new motorway studies, which are dynamic and offer some nice ideas for compositions, but also some new studies of the local woodlands and the common which have a very different feel, and present more difficulties in a way, in trying to do something more original with scenes like these, but I remain committed to both subjects. I’m just playing around, making stuff and trying not to over think it at the moment. 

oil on panel study, 10" x 12", current

I’m thinking about doing some portraits and still lives next week….

Audience Feedback....Birmingham Open Studios 2022

Studio view

I welcomed visitors to my studio last weekend as a participating artist in the Birmingham Open Studios event across the city (although most of the artists participating seem to be based in South Birmingham, my neck of the woods). I enjoyed it. Friends and strangers came, and I enjoyed discussing my work and sharing my studio space. It had been a bit difficult to tidy too much with me being on crutches, but at the same time I didn’t really want to: if I was a visitor I would have enjoyed looking ‘behind the scenes’ of the artist and the work. So comments were made about my large, unruly palette, what paints I used, the canvasses in preparation and the many, many brushes. 

I also talked a lot about the subject matter too: my conviction in looking in ‘your own backyard’ for inspiration. I had chosen to display paintings based in Kings Heath where I live to emphasise this and thinking they may have local interest-and also about the importance of just trying to make the work you felt you needed to make without thinking too much about an audience, as this is where problems can often lie. These are conversations I started at art school, and never really go away. Of course, you are just making the art you need to make. And yet…it would be a bit disingenuous to say mental notes are not taken of comments that are made, observing what paintings seem to ‘land’, which postcards sold, and which do not. But at the end of the day, from my experience, these things are entirely unpredictable. Every viewer brings something of themselves as to why they may be attracted to a certain piece. These things are certainly not universal, so it's best to carry on regardless.

'Grounded II', oil on canvas, 40 x 30cms, 2021

Many of the visitors to the studio had found their way there attracted by my painting of the car in snow that had been in the brochure (above) That was a surprise to me, although I have always been pleased with this piece and another that accompanied it (below). I sold both and could have sold that first one three times over. 

'Grounded III', oil on canvas, 60 x 50cms, 2021

Postcards for sale ( a new thing...)

I also sold a small studio still life and a small ‘lorry park’ landscape. I also sold an etching (these are now becoming consistently popular at exhibitions), and nearly all of the postcards I had made, What a good idea these were…

Boiled Eggs and Nuts....

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Boston Cremes', oil on canvas, 38 x 38inches , 1961

I’m at home recovering from an operation on my ankle. I have a huge, supportive boot on my right foot, and I can only walk with the aid of crutches which are used to help me to ‘hop’ around. I feel pretty helpless. This is harder than I thought it would be. 

I will be off work for a staggering 3 months, which is appealing- lots of books to read, films and TV to watch, bass guitar to learn and practice, and of course hopefully some art, but I have yet to figure out quite how yet, but it has only been 2 days since the op….but as usual this is the first thing on my mind…

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Luncheon', oil on canvas, 2010, 38 x 38inches

A big monograph on artist Wayne Thiebaud, a favourite painter, arrived today. As I look through the beautiful reproductions I’m struck by the many formal similarities and interests we share across our respective work: the carefully considered compositions where everything is in the right place with a lot of repetitive shapes and forms; an unfussy, almost flat-footed, but always closely observed, treatment of form; a sense of the whole without skimping on the details; the physical handling of the paint itself, the drag, the pull and the push in the brushwork. And finally, the colour and the light which holds all these elements together. These are qualities I really enjoy in the paintings and painters I return to, and continually try to explore in my own work. I’ve learned a lot about harnessing and appreciating these things from artists such as Thiebaud.  

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Cold Case', oil on canvas, 48 x 60inches, 2010-13

I’m also struck today when looking at the work afresh by Thiebaud’s continued interest in depicting the same small range of subject matter over a 70 year or more career: the cakes and pastries; the gumball machines; shoes, jackets and deadpan portraits that best represent the tense, spare yet stagey compositions he is most associated with. The colour is all in the objects themselves and their shadows, with very little colour in the background and the surfaces the objects sit in. These are mostly white. 

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Towards 280,' oil on canvas, 54 x 60in, 1999-2000

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Winding River', acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60inches, 2002

 And then there are the expansive, freer paintings of landscapes which seem a counter to the still lives and portraits. These depict cityscapes of San Francisco and the landscape of Sacramento, California where he lived and worked. They are complex spatial arrangements with their snaking and looping freeways, glistening lakes and valleys; patterned fields and gridded streets. There exist distorted games with perspective in the skyscrapers, architecture and trees, often intermingling in unexpected ways. And then huge slabs of Californian mountainside look just like extreme close-ups of the heavily iced cakes in the other works. I like this bounce between. 

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Canyon Mountains', oil on canvas, 66 x 54 inches, 2011-12

The same subjects are explored endlessly, Thiebaud never getting bored with finding multiple ways to skin the same cat, yet also, despite such a long career (he died aged 101), they are painted very consistently. It’s hard to tell a cake painted in 1963 apart from one painted in 2013. 

I find this reassuring today as I think about my own painting, particularly my landscapes. Although in my own painting there is a large range of landscapes that have now accrued over time there is a consistent tone and approach to the work, and despite different excursions into other areas I keep returning to these few core ideas that repeat across the work: the street scenes at night; the motorways and bridges; canals and local woods; the fields of pylons and the many depictions of different cars and vans. 

Shaun Morris, 'Late Night Delivery', oil on canvas, 90 x 120cms, 2022

Like Thiebaud and so many painters, this seems to be the tradition I find myself in when I occasionally take the time to step back a bit to reflect. In small, incremental ways it seems over the last 20 years I've busy creating a painted world that seems to be becoming more distinctly mine but based on a world observed and very much outside of me.  Although this recognition feels fairly positive, maybe this forced time off will help me think about these issues a bit more carefully, as one always hopes to also keep moving forward too... 

 

Summer's Almost Gone....

 

'Ice Cream Wars', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2022

It’s the end of the summer holidays…I’m back at work, my children return to school next week. I always feel slightly wistful as we all go our separate ways again as another summer break draws to a close, which for most parents I think, but definitely for this one, can be pretty exhausting. Yet each summer seems a keen marker of time as the kids grow up so quickly. 

 

This new painting that I’ve been working on this week is based on observations I’ve made of a burnt-out ice cream van on the Moseley Road, just 200 yards from the college I work at. It seemed like a real gift of a subject and an image to work with as I drove down late at night to photograph it, having spied it on my journey to and from work. It also seems to perfectly capture something of those end of summer blues, but also seems pretty loaded in other multiple ways, particularly in the current political and social climate of the UK. 

 

In the studio this week

Anyway, I LOVED painting it over a few late nights this week with some current listening in the studio of Yo La Tengo’s ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out’ and Miles Davis’ ‘In A Silent Way’. All new, but very exciting, listening to me. Through this large 4 x 5ft piece I feel a bit more energised about my painting again too. Although I have worked, as ever I guess, steadily and consistently in the studio this year, I have also struggled to feel that excited about what I’ve been doing and also feel it has been a bit all over the place. I’ve painted over as many paintings as I’ve made, feeling very unsatisfied. I’d like to write about some of this in a few more posts, but for now I thought I would say hello again from the present as I’ve not written in ages. ...