We don’t usually do an Artists’ Open House at Christmas. In all honesty most people have other things on their minds than buying paintings. On the other hand they are looking for presents, and many people are fed up with some of the over-priced, stereotyped gifts on sale.

However, we have so many talented friends and neighbours: artists, writers and craftsmen. And we have a lovely ready-made venue. We know quite a lot of people between us all. They might even enjoy looking at some lovely things – and perhaps buy a few.

I’m a great believer in collaboration so we’re all collaborating – to offer a Wolf at the Door pop-up. One weekend only, Saturday 6/Sunday 7 December

We’ll be having silver jewellery and glass from Campoli & Nelson, whose lovely work we have shown many times. Also original felt and paper jewellery from Small Bird Singing, plus a raft of Beach Hut Writers, all local of course, with their own signed books. A graphic novel, a thriller, children’s fiction, a debut novel, much more.

There will be paintings and cards by Mary Rayner, much-loved children’s author, and some small ones of my own including my recent series of Brighton Glimpses, mixed media on reclaimed cedar wood blocks.

These smell wonderful and work much better singly or ideally in small groups. They should also keep moths at bay! I had assembled them as one large framed piece but haven’t exhibited it because, simply, it’s just too heavy and bulky. The individual blocks feel chunky but light and, all being well, will be in simple white frames.

It never rains but it pours. This last Wednesday saw the hanging of my current exhibition with Gail Gibson Tait, Sense and Serendipity. It also saw the private view of the Affordable Art Fair which I unfortunately had to forego.

Hanging an exhibition is a strange art or science – or mixture of the two. You start with a chaos of shapes and colours and sizes. If there’s more than one artist there’s also the question of style and compatibility. You lay things out. You move them round, change your mind again, try out a few unexpected juxtapositions. It can take ages. It can go fairly smoothly. Slowly, surprisingly, order and dare I say beauty emerge.

It’s always interesting when someone else hangs your work because they see it without all the baggage and associations you yourself attach to it. But they don’t always pick up the details, the little things that mean the exhibition flows. The eye moves easily from piece to piece but spends enough time on each without distraction.

In this case a broken wrist meant we and not the curator hung (hanged?) our own pictures. And, if I say so myself, it all looks great. This is very satisfying!

The Grange Gallery is a real discovery. Once the home of the artist William Nicholson, who also lived in Newark in a very similar house, it’s set on the picturesque old village green. It’s almost opposite Kipling’s House and the award-winning public gardens which once belonged to Kipling. If the weather’s good you can picnic there and stroll through the lovely walled gardens.

Newhaven has its own distinctive atmosphere, the clean lines of sea and buildings set against an appealing decrepitude. Its geography is intimately bound up with its identity as a port – a port struggling against obsolescence, social change and decay. As you wait in line for the ferry you have time to absorb the atmosphere.

The birds here are waiting, too. For dusk? For what? Where will they go? I hadn’t crossed the channel from Newhaven to Dieppe for years but used this route a month or so ago.

So the paint was hardly dry on this piece when it was collected to be shown at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea next week. It’s made with mixed media (acrylics, inks and pastels) on board. Another brand-new piece that has gone there is my Lady of the Downs. Recognise her?

The full painting is below. It started with the Long Man of Wilmington, an unmissable part of the Sussex landscape. which is set in a sort of natural bowl whose contours and striations contrast with the stark clean lines of the ‘drawing’. I’ve doodled and sketched this many times. Suddenly I realised that what I was drawing was an elegant feminine figure, with a pronounced waist and hips. It seems I’m not the first to have thought this. I like the thought of a benign feminine presence on the Downs and have set her in a landscape with soft colours and flowing lines. Again it uses mixed media (acrylics, inks and pastels) on board’

A third brand new painting has also gone to join other recent pieces in Battersea.

Back from holiday, making new work, getting ready for exhibitions.

That’s the flavour of autumn each year. Last year’s return to work was after a soggy, cool summer. No-one can complain about this last one. Lots of long warm days. Nevertheless I did far less painting than planned. My studio was still a shambles after building works and disruptions.

So now it’s full steam ahead: resolving and finishing (or scrapping) older work in progress. Attacking new ideas. Working out how to tackle ideas that have been with me for a while but not yet found their expression.

I always talk about ‘making work’, I find, rather than just ‘painting’. There’s such a lot of practical stuff to do. Preparing boards or supports or canvases. Making paper, in my case – I did quite a bit of that in the hot sunshine. (It’s such a messy watery business and the cat always tries to get in on the act so I much prefer not to do it indoors.) Then you need to set aside mostly-finished work for a bit so you can come upon it unawares and glimpse it objectively. It might need radical work, or simply a tweak or two.

Just occasionally you must learn to leave well alone – it works! That’s it: enough. Do not touch.

And then there’s the mounting and framing…that’s another story.

More details soon, but I have two art events in the offing. One is my joint exhibition with Gail Gibson Tait at the Grange Gallery, Rottingdean, later this month: Sense and Serendipity. I’ll post separately about why we called it this.

Secondly, the Affordable Art Fair at Battersea, 23-26 October. again with the Nicholas Bowlby Gallery. It never rains but it pours: the two shows overlap so I’m not yet sure which work will be in which show. Serendipity I hope! And then I’ll be looking out for some new opportunities.

I’ve been keeping a low profile this season after a couple of years of alarms and excursions. Catching up with house and garden – both were decrepit and neglected when we moved here three years ago. Boring admin: mailing lists, updating the website (widgets and plug-ins and whatnot). Making plans: exhibitions, collaborations; to do or not to do Open House? And, finally, making new work and finishing old.

Sometimes it seems hard to fit any painting in. There are always boards to be primed, frames to be made, materials to prepare. And, in my case, there’s paper to be made. Some of my most interesting work (I think) is made on my own paper. All you need is space, water and – you hope – sunshine. Some cotton fibres, a flat surface, cloths, a mesh screen. And… a CAT.

Anfd the end result is nearly always…pawprints.

Summer needs to be enjoyed. It’s all too brief and fickle in this country. So as well as starting to work again properly in my studio I’ve been doing other things.

Here are a few: hunting out some good new galleries (suggestions welcome). Mainly in the south-east, a few further afield. Putting some of my work for sale online with Artfinder – more soon. Arranging a two-artist show with Hove plein air painter Gail Tait for the autumn. Entering a few open art exhibitions – it takes time, it’s always a toss-up! And planning a really exciting project to do with the Night Sky. Fingers crossed about this.

Sorting out photos. Here are some from my most recent completed piece of work, ‘The great Big Prairies Concertina Book’. I made this for Paul and Pauline who created the wonderful and inspiring Sussex Prairies garden near Henfield, Sussex, now a major tourist draw but started from scratch a mere 6 or 7 years ago. Thirty feet of sketches, collage, painting, pastels and what-have-you – that’s mixed media!

I tried to give a stream-of-conscious picture of this lovely, quiet place. Swirling concentric borders, plants, litlle winding paths. Leaves, flowers, botanical names, sculptures, events, pigs, the resident dog, snails…

I usually make books for particular occasions or people but will consider commissions. Be warned, it’s a very unpredictable medium – you never know what’s going to pop up!

The shortest night has just passed, but here is the night sky on Midsummer’s Eve, June 21st

First I made two pieces of paper from cotton fibres, then I applied the background colours with lots of washes and, towards the end, some spattering and splashing of colours. I also brushed in blue pigments such as cobalt. Next, the constellations were drawn in ink in a roughly correct position. Quite difficult! I exaggerated their shapes – they have such romantic names. Dragon, Swan, Serpent…. Then I added silver leaf to the planets, the sky’s margins and as tiny speckles of light.

Finally I assembled the whole thing, protected the colours and the silver leaf with fixative spray (so it won’t tarnish) and mounted it. Only a frame needed.

I hope this explains how time-consuming such a piece of work can be to make! There is a lot of making involved as well as painting. I am about to embark on a really large night sky piece: a truly exciting project to mark a special date. More details soon.

And this is my first post on the new-look website – comments and feedback welcomed.

Contact me via my Facebook artist page

 

Not taking part in the Brighton Festival Artists Open House this year has given me a bit of space to catch up with myself and make plans. So hard to think ahead when you’re rushing for deadlines.

All being well some of my work will be at the Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead later this week, though I don’t know which pieces. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing art-related projects in the barn at Sussex Prairies, where I had a season-long solo exhibition last year. It’s a relaxing place to be at any time of year. The drifts and swirls of planting in the garden are only just coming to life with mists of colour rather than the vivid blaze of high summer.

I’m planning a two-artist exhibition in the autumn with the talented plein air artist Gail Tait. Our work goes together well, though it’s very different – that probably goes for us too! More details soon.

And I’m entering for a few open competitions and awards – a precursor to hunting out some new gallery opportunities. When you move regions it takes a while to get the hang of how things work, but now it’s time to look forwards, and embrace change.

And this will probably be my last post here before major changes in the look and organisation of this website. One of my Sussex prairies projects involved making a large concertina book about the gardens and the things that go on in them. To make you smile, here are some shots of my cat pulling a fast one over me and settling herself comfortably on the drying pages.

It won’t come as news to many that The Wolf at the Door isn’t opening for the 2014 Brighton and Hove Festival. Four weekends (plus Bank Holidays) of opening the house, thousands (literally) through the door, fourteen or so artists to organise; admin, publicity, hanging, health and safety, cleaning the loo….A year out now and then doesn’t come amiss!

However, as always, you’re welcome to visit The Wolf at the Door by appointment. Just email or give us a ring. During the second half of May there’ll be an exhibition of my work hanging in what’s known in the Wolf household as the SLOG. This isn’t because a lot of work goes on in there – though it does. It’s because we could never work out what to call it and always ended up saying ‘you know – the studio – office – library – gallery’…. The SLOG!

Above you can see a few pages from my Cretan holiday sketchbook – 17 feet of coloured-pencil sketches (and a bit of text) in a concertina book. The house and garden were called Carpe Diem! I hadn’t used coloured pencils since my teens and found it challenging but fun. Hard and easy at the same time. More extracts on here soon. Below it in the photo you is my new piece based on the gorgeous York station.

Meantime, here’s a link to the Wolf at the Door newsletter which has just gone out. (If doesn’t show as live, this’ll be for baffling reasons beyond my control – you’ll have to copy and paste – sorry!) Do read it, forward it and share it with anyone you think might be interested. There’s a ‘subscribe’ button at the bottom:

http://eepurl.com/TAhZj

There’s such a plethora of art websites mediating between artists and buyers and selling work online. Life can’t be easy for gallerists, with high property and running costs and the crippling fees charged by the large art fairs. Which means they can’t afford to take a punt very often on unusual or quirky art, they have to follow the market rather than lead it.

On the other hand, how can you buy art without looking at the real thing, appreciating the textures, layers and the impact of the colours? With a print it should be relatively easy to match image and reality, but one-off artworks are of their nature three-dimensional and complex.

However, the ‘long tail’ effect of the internet means that as a buyer or seller you aren’t limited by the temporary, changing and chance-led nature of physical exhibitions. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time you’ll miss the piece that might have set you on fire. You rely on serendipity.

I’m giving Artfinder a try as I’ve heard good things about it and, although it’s a painstaking business getting it all set up, there’s the comfort of knowing that a great deal is done to avoid giving the wrong or incomplete view of the artwork, its size, scale and materials. In particular you’re encouraged to put several snapshots of the work on each listing so the viewer gets a real idea of the impact and presentation of the work. How will it look in your sitting-room? That’s the reality; we don’t live in galleries!

Here’s one piece I’ve listed, the tiniest and most recent of my ‘Coast’ pieces: reclaimed wood, handmade paper, paints, inks and pigments: Special Place.