Trumpets! A busy weekend concluded for the better. Friday was the opening of Celebrating The Diversity at The Cubby Hole at my new tusty clonking cane was an excellent addition to my attire if a little awkward when juggling a Mr. Kiplings Cherry Bakewell AND a balloon glass of fine red wine. The gold spectacles were a visual success although covering the eyes can hinder communication and so I felt like removing them half of the time. The beret generated heat. The whole place was hot and got hotter as the evening progressed. A giant artwork was painted and I contributed some insects, birdy footprints and one or two flowers of little consequence.
On Saturday I finally completed and signed off my giant Lyceum painting. I tell myself that I've learned something but this might not be true. The days when I noted down what I'd learned and the problems I'd had are largely in the past. So what have I learned? A few technical processes regarding the priming of perspex, how to paint and store (while drying) large heavy artworks, and the use of a horizontal metal bar to rest my maul stick on. A new plastic clip for the top of my stick to stop it wavering. These are minor technicalities. What else?!...
Firstly I wasted too much time chasing detail down an ever shrinking spiral staircase. Contouring the rocks and other large details and shading them simply would have saved time and looked better (perhaps... the rocks were a disappointment at the time but on the final day I looked at them in amazement quite absorbed by the craters and canyons of the planet Mars that they seemed to actually be - perhaps the war that this painting became was itself reflected in the very rocks that caused the tension?)
The feathers looked quite bizarre and would have been much faster to paint if painted with the texture of fire, which in the end adorned not the phoenix but the grass at its feet (this detail has to be seen in person and it worth it - as can often the be case the final unplanned flourishes of flair and élan make all the difference). The tree should have been painted over a smooth sky, I think that's undoubted. Analysis complete.
>Now on Sunday I collected paintings from Bickerton. No sales. Works that did sell were typically small £40-£100 and of cats, flowers, landscapes and pretty things like that. Little originality.
Today I set up my exhibition at Sevens of Macclesfield. The nice shop owner Terry did most of the work and even offered to hang the lot for me, which made everything so much easier. The exhibition runs until the 27th.
Finally progress is being made on The Love Reliquary, a triptych encased in a cabinet inspired by the art of the medieval reliquary. Here is the latest photo...
Olé! Onward to greater things, as the trumpets fade to cellos.
