Not another public vote!  Just a quick post this time – summer is galloping past.  I’m delighted to say that this painting, Murmuration 2, has been shortlisted for the National Open Art Competition (@tnoac).

If you like it,  would you consider casting a vote for it?  It would be much appreciated. To make it simple for you, here is the direct link:

http://www.nationalopenart.org/gallery2.php…

Official description: Semi-abstract attempt to capture the light and endless horizon of the Sussex coast. Starlings, making those elegant, perfect formations which repeatedly dissolve and re-form. Science meets art.   Mixed media and silver leaf on my own handmade paper.

You can vote for as many paintings as you like; the complete list is here – it’s a long short list!  But they do get an awful lot of entries…. World Art Vote.

I guess most artists have mixed feelings about these competitive events, as I’ve said before. They can be expensive and time-consuming, and often your paintings are  tied up for months so you can’t display or sell them meanwhile.  And it’s always demoralising to be turned down.  But this  is a competition I really rate. Each painting is presented anonymously to the judges so it doesn’t matter who you are or who you know. The standard, to my eyes,  is alarmingly high. It’s beautifully and efficiently run by courteous and helpful staff.

Alongside the official judging there is also a ‘people’s vote’ – that’s the link above – the winning piece goes through whether or not the judges like it. These votes are a bit embarrassing for those of us who don’t have thousands of friends and followers on social media, but there you are….

In other news, I’ll post a link to the most recent Wolf at the Door newsletter (which is not very recent!) and will do a proper update after the Bank Holiday.

The Wolf closes his doors

Yes, our doors are closed – though we’re always happy to see people by appointment. And, please note… .

I’m managing a March post by the skin of my teeth.  It’s been a busy month. Weather hasn’t been good enough yet for papermaking when I’ve had a day free for it.

March 8th-12th saw the Battersea Affordable Art Fair.  Three of my paintings went there with the Nicholas Bowlby Gallery,  This one, by far the largest, was sold: Night Sky, Late Winter, mixed media on canvas.  I wonder where this is hanging now?  To my mind  galleries earn every bit of their commission when you know what a lot of work, expense and planning is involved in doing a big London art fair.  The downside, though, is that you don’t know who has bought your work.

The following weekend, 17th-19th March,  saw another art fair, the brand-new Talented Art Fair for established artists wanting to sell directly to the public – which addresses my last point.  It takes a lot of effort to prepare, make, frame, string and label your work. And then…pack it, transport it, hang it, label it…and try to sell it.  It was very enjoyable, though: beautifully organised and well publicised, with a really friendly and helpful team.  I chose work with a rather muted palette to hang – my new tree quartet in the middle there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was buzzing in Spitalfields with markets in full swing and people out enjoying themselves. Then a bus across Tower Bridge and a walk along the towpath to our air b’n’b, near where Dickens placed Fagin’s hideout, and Bill Sykes supposedly met his end in the Thames ooze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I don’t have time to do much else in the studio I nowadays try at least to paint a small something.  At the moment I am using offcuts of thin MDF boards, cut to 15x20cm, to use odd bits of mixed-up paint, try out patterns, make some instinctive marks or do pretty well whatever comes to mind. Or, rather, fingers: I try not to think too much and just enjoy myself.  Overthinking is the devil!

Coming up soon: three major events in May.  Artists’ Open House, for the duration of the Brighton Festival.  The Hampstead Affordable Art Fair (with the Nicholas Bowlby Gallery); and the opening of the Nigel Rose Gallery on the Brighton seafront, under th Arches, where I will be having work on regular display.  Lots and lots to prepare and to share – but more of that in my next bulletin. In the meantime I’ll leave you with a progress picture of our workshop refurbishment:  real progress.  It’s so light!  Come and see us,  and it, in May!

I imagined myself going into an enjoyable hibernation during January and February, emerging at intervals to paint a picture here and there.  Instead life has been a hurly-burly since well before Christmas. Not all stressful; I’ve been to some very interesting exhibitions and  other good things. The Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion exhibition (picture below) is on for some time yet, in an extraordinary house near Temple Station on the London Embankment,  built  in grandiose style by Lord Astor.  I went to school just round the corner so a lot of memories (best expurgated).

We stayed overnight opposite my long-ago university  Hall of Residence (more memories), after an amazing concert by the pianist Mitsouko Uchida.  We also enjoyed a meal overlooking the Thames.  The illuminations always lift my spirits. You might have noticed I’m keen on blues….

In the usual feast-or-famine way, art events are bunching up and approaching fast.  Some of my new work is going to the Affordable Art Fair on 9th-12th March, and some more the very next weekend to the Talented Art Fair in the Old Truman Brewery, East London.  This is rather exciting as it’s the inaugural event, intended for established artists,  by the dynamic team who have organised the very successful New Artists’ Fair.

On the downside, it means getting into Central London by car and doing all the donkey work (bar the main publicity).  Hanging, labelling, being there…of course that’s why we normally pay galleries such hefty fees to do it for us, and I do believe it’s  worth every penny!

However this is a chance to meet the public – a new public – and, should I sell any paintings, actually know where they’ve gone. If you sell via a gallery you rarely know.  And I love it when a buyer sends me a photo of my painting in its new home. Where will this painting of trees in a misty Hove Park end up, I wonder?

There’s lots more in the pipeline – a new gallery and Artists’ Open House just to name two –  but I’ll report more on future plans when this particular  challenge is over.

A very happy New Year to all friends, family, followers, readers, and also the much-appreciated owners of my work. (Many people have kindly sent me  photos of my work in its new home, and I cherish these.) New art is made and  in the pipeline – see above.

Owing  to various crises in the Wolf household I’m behindhand with the greetings, but here’s a belated link to the Christmas Wolf at the Door/Jill Tattersall newsletter. However, now the bogeyman has led off all the naughty children to heaven knows where,  it’s time to think ahead and plan.

Brian Eno has written a thoughtful and positive  article  suggesting that 2016 marked the bottom of a (post-Thatcher) trough. This makes sense to me; the decline has accompanied my working life.  So,  just maybe, 2017 will mark the beginnings of beneficial change.  As an operating philosophy, I’m going along with that.  We need to  be constructive, collaborative and optimistic for the future’s sake.

Ok, we’re enslaved by our screens and phones, but we’re also revolting against our Kindles.  We long for something tactile, something we can feel and touch and smell and feast our eyes on. Art and craft in all their forms.  Look how beatiful and innovative book design has recently become.  What a pleasure to pick up one of these supposedly endangered species!

On a personal note, just befor Christmas I showed work for the first time at the exquisite Amanda Aldous Gallery near Basingstoke.  We delivered paintings travelling through a mysterious, misty landscape to a beautiful light-filled barn in Tunworth.

It felt like an allegory!  We also ate the delicious local Camembert-like cheese, baked, and visited the restored George and Mary Watts Artist Village nearby –  fascinating and strongly recommended.  If you ever wonder how much volunteers can achieve, here’s your answer.

I have just done  the basic entry for 2017 May Artists’ Open House – i.e. paid the dosh – so now I’m committed. (I always think, never again….)  But then, I meet so many wonderful visitors, exchange all sorts of unlikely and useful information, work alongside lovely colleagues –  and usually shift a fair number of paintings. Which has to be good, or we’d have no room to sit down in the house.

More about concrete plans in newsletters to come. Meantime, warmest greetings to all.

 

1066 and all that

The last few weeks have been dominated by preparations  for my  exhibition in the Sussex town of Battle which opened yesterday.  It’s not called Battle for nothing. If you don’t already know you soon will: Friday marks the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – the one date every English person knows. (Or do they, still?)

The centrepiece is the largest painting  and has borders inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry.  You can see Halley’s Comet in the top left-hand corner.

The exhibition

…is called ‘Reading the Heavens: Night Sky, October 14th 1066’.  It’s composed entirely of night skies.  The centrepiece, above, shows what William and Harold and everyone else would have seen if they’d gazed up into the sky around then.  I’d better avoid tasteless jokes  on the lines that Harold must have looked up or he wouldn’t have got an arrow in his eye -it’s a long time ago  and it isn’t even certain he did.

 

Stargazing

From earliest times people have gazed up into the stars  What does it all mean? Where do we belong in that immensity?  Around Easter in 1066 Halley’s Comet appeared in the sky.  It’s even shown in the Bayeux Tapestry.  People marvelled at it and what it might portend. What did both sides feel on the eve of the struggle? What were the omens? How much were they like us?

Why this subject?

Before I was an artist I taught medieval French language and literature.  After the Conquest, William ravaged the North and gave  the English nobility a rough time. French became the language of the wealthy, educated and powerful in England.   Many  early ‘French’ poems and stories were actually written in England.  And the Bayeux tapestry – which tells the story of the Conquest from William’s point of view of course – was probably made in England. My interest in the events of 1066 and the Bayeux Tapestry goes back a long way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Night Sky, Aquarius

 

Astronomy and astrology only parted company recently. 

Newton took an intense interest in astrology and alchemy. Early Arabic and western astronomers gave poetic names to the constellations.  Dragon, lynx, scorpion, bear, lion, bull…Quite a few of my paintings take particular dates or events and show  the constellations and stars at that moment.  Roughly.  (It’s art, not science!)  Some of them use more artistic licence than others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a lovely piece about the painting and my work  in the current edition of Sussex Life:

1066 Sussex Life article

Here are some tiny night sky paintings on reclaimed cedar blocks made specially for the exhibition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Moon, Flight of Birds                                           Black Moon

An unusually quick update.  I realise I hadn’t even uploaded this new painting to my website gallery although it’s visible hanging in the sitting-room on the header picture showing our Open House in May

This painting is actually in Lincoln at the lovely Harding House Gallery on Steep Hill.  (Which is indeed very very steep.)  However it’s shortly coming south because it’s been shortlisted for the National Open Art Competition.   Friends and readers of my blog and Facebook postings know I have mixed feelings about entering these competitions. It costs in time and money and it ties up work, sometimes for months. Especially as you want to show your newest and best, But this is one I really rate, and I haven’t succeeded before.

 

 

 

 

 

Detail, Murmuration, Before the Storm

 

 

I love watching the endless sweeping and swirling of the starlings as they move in and out of complex geometrical  formations.  Brighton Pier, near where I live, is one place to see them. I have just sold an earlier ‘Murmuration’ (which you can see on the right-hand picture above) which used some decriptive jottings from Coleridge’s diary.  There’s even a wonderful Facebook page where people post their own photos and videos of the birds.

The painting is of a particular moment when there was a storm brewing and it felt as if the air was charged and something was going to happen.  There was a sulphurous tinge to the sea – I used a yellow underpainting among the many washes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you do like the painting I’d be very pleased if you’d vote for it here on the NOA website:

Murmurations Vote

in the  unlikely event it wins it’ll save it going through the next stage of selections.  Here it is  as it looks on the wall.

 

Where has the time gone?

More than a month has gone since the last post.  Such a busy month.  Taking down and returning art and sculpture after five weeks of Artists’ Open House (five weeks is TOO long).  A brief week in, reputedly, the hottest spot in Europe – which was itself experiencing a heatwave. Andalucia, so beautiful,  so so cripplingly hot for early  June. Then straight into organising our weekend event, Art and Gardens, here at the Wolf at the Door.

Art and Gardens

This happened on 16th/17th July.  Art indoors and out.  Above you can see my ‘Botanica’ series and on the left the beautiful plant-and-garden-based scrolls by Rea Stavropoulos. (Rea’s own exhibition, based on the art of Helen Allingham, is currently on at Burgh House, Hampstead.)

We wondered if we’d get many visitors as it was an unofficial happening, but it was well attended, the weather was beautiful and everyone really enjoyed themselves, including the participants.  Idyllic, really – which is what makes it all worth doing.  Though each time I think, never again…such a lot of work to organise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To do or not to do?

It’s the eternal dilemma. How much time to spend actually making work:  painting and looking and thinking and planning?  How much time for publicity, that ever-proliferating demand on our efforts ? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogging…let alone press-releases, approaching galleries, seeking out exhibitions and opportunities, a never-ending list? Workshops and talks?…not to mention updating the website…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Extra events

How much time to give to purely voluntary events like ‘Art and Gardens’ – collaborative and community-orientated,  intended to bring pleasure to all and opportunities for the artists? Very time-and energy-consuming, though.   Is it a luxury?  Should I do any more,  I ask?  Do I spread myself too thinly?  Writers have agents (though some fear they’re a dying breed); few artists have the benefit of a firm but kindly (we hope) external eye to comment and guide.

Seascapes in Lincoln

I omitted to say that straight after Art and Gardens I promptly set off with eight paintings for an exhibition in  Lincoln, where I had my first sizeable solo show way back in 2003.  Just in case you live or are going anywhere near there, the exhibition is at Harding House Gallery in Steep Hill, thus named for a purpose! – let’s not detail the difficulties of delivering large pictures up a near-precipice in another heat-wave!  On till 27th August, called I must go down to the Sea Again, curated by Soo Durham. No pics as yet.

There’s quite a lot in the pipeline, including some more far-flung locations for shows so I’ll try my best to post again soon. If you’d like to see our tallest kinetic art exhibit, click on Andrew Jones’s weather-vane video below!

Andrew’s weather-vane

 

 

 

 

 

 

The five weeks of Artists’ Open House have come and gone.  Warm thanks to everyone who visited us.   Some people came several times! Being realists, we do put this down not just to the exquisite art but also to Siobhan’s marvellous cakes and delicacies.  It was wonderful to be surrounded by all that terrific art for a month.

Much of it has gone to new,  appreciative homes.  A wonderful stone carving, Big Fish by Penny May, has been sold (by appointment) to the the Queen’s Own Fishmonger.

Thirteen of my own paintings are off to new homes.  It’s really not just about the money, though we all have to live.  Selling paintings is an essential part of liberating your mind to make new work.  And of course it’s a massive vote of confidence.  Almost all of us have to work hard for our money and I really appreciate someone being willing and keen to buy my work.

The other main pleasure is the fascinating conversations.  The most extraordinary coincidences,  discoveries,  exchanges of information, offers of help  and even generous gifts …truly inspiring and heart-warming.

Visitors returning for their third visit this year brought me some amazing vintage Japanese papers, and also a beautiful jacket dyed with indigo. By coincidence the visitor’s  mother taught music at the girls’ school in London where I was sent after we returned from Africa  – and hated it as much as I did. And she herself had worked at Cornelissens, the wonderful old-fashioned art shop I used to haunt at that time – and where I’d just bought some lapis lazuli which you can see here in a pot on the paper.

Then there was the gallerist from Lincoln who came looking for seascapes, not realising our paths had crossed long ago  She was also the person appointed to rescue the Magna Carta art display in Lincoln after the steering group I’d been invited to join collapsed for reasons I was never told.  (Alas  we were never put in touch.)  I made the painting anyway, and now at last she’s seen it here: Night Sky June 19th 1215.

Three years ago I sold a painting (called ‘Tremor’)  to a man who planned to take it back to Peru. Naturally he was interested in earthquakes.  This lovely and very determined guy has just visited again and told me what happened next….

The painting was scanned. It was swabbed. A hole was drilled in the back as it went from airport to airport. At every stage it was first refused.  Finally it got to S. America but was too big to go through the luggage gauge and had to travel with the stewardesses. On the last lap it practically impounded when… the buyer revealed he was British. And he was waved through. Here’s  the piece he went through all that for – and now it’s  lived through an earthquake.

What looked like a quiet year is turning eventful.  Various interesting prospects have arisen.  Events here at the Wolf at the Door in Hove.  Exhibitions  in Lincoln, in Dorset, in Battle and (I hope), Hastings.  Next year Dieppe, Ely, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Umbria – and who knows where else?

 

The Brighton and Hove Artists’ Open House is in full swing and The Wolf at the Door has been welcoming visitors.   There’s far more of my own work on display than usual – not an attack of megalomania but the result of last-minute changes.

Through extremes of weather, scorching and stormy, Andrew Jones’s mesmerising kinetic sculpures have continues to twirl, quiver, rotate and drift, to universal delight.

Joe Campoli’s glass has sparkled and Linda Calvert’s translucent lamps have glowed alluringly, whether in the sunshine or the gloom.

Penny May has sold a very Big Fish carved in Zimbabwean stone to Her Majesty’s official Fishmonger.  (Not to mention Prince Charles.)  We can be sure it’ll be appreciated.

Lisa Cirenza, while preparing for a solo exhibition in Covent Garden which begins next week, has managed to print and finish and frame some of her experimental, meticulously-prepared digital work.  Just watch out if you’re travelling on the Underground and see the woman opposite making covert sketches on her i-pad!

I also have my new mega-canvas made to commemorate the Battle of Hastings, with borders inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry.  One of my Night Sky series – there are five or six on show here and they’ve been attracting a lot of comment. (Favourable, I add hastily!)  You can see the image below in Philippa Hammond’s lovely and informative blog on the Open Houses:

http://www.artistsopenhouses.co.uk/brighton-and-hove-2016/aoh-2016-first-weekend/

 

We’ve tried to create light and space and I’m pleased with how all the art looks hung in this way.  Colour rules!  Upstairs we have natural materials, stone, earth pigments – slap up against cutting-edge digital technology.  And it works!

Elsewhere we have hot-coloured paintings,  vivid digital portraits and luminous glass creating splashes of colour set against quiet sea and sky tones  and glowing lamps.

Quite a few red dots appeared on the first weekend and have continued, though last Sunday was quiet owing to the blazing sunshine and the attractions of the beach which was packed.  We have three more weekends to go and some wonderful work to show, so do please come and also tell others about it.  Best show yet.  In my view.