One Love Report

Well, the One Love award ceremony is over and I didn't win but was not disappointed. There was a lot of high quality work there, with some that was less than high quality but the judges made a fair assessment in my opinion, awarding what I'd consider to be among the good ones. A few caught my eye: John Afflick's angels swooping on a stadium, a picture by Mick Davies that was like (I think) James Ensor's great picture about Christ entering Belgium (the Ensor picture was better though), a nice impressionist painting of South African footballers by Renata Jansen, a huge colourful night scene by Xavier Pick, some colourful historical-esque fine paintings by Alan Salisbury, and I liked the second prize winner a lot too, a crumpled felt Subbuteo mat. I've also had a photo session today and interview for the Crewe Chronicle so I should get a mention in the local press. The joy of making the final 80 out of over 800 entries was tarnished not by not winning (plenty of good pictures, like the ones I mentioned, didn't win) but by my computer being infected with a horrible virus which led to much nervousness and work today. I'm still not sure that the machine is clean but my three anti-virus tools all say clean (it should be said that two said 'clean' when it wasn't).