SO much to report, I've barely got time to stop and breathe. These days are busy. I'm working now on three cabinet type artworks, the first The Monstrance Of Life is the simplest...
It's an oak cabinet with nine paintings inside that will be wall or floor standing. The work is about joy and life and contentment, almost like Beethoven's 6th Symphony in art. The idea came to me while watching a quiet Swedish film and a moment of happiness and perfect contentment. Unlike much of my work it's quite simple, no deep symbolic meaning, and more in the Brahms tradition than my Wagnerian romanticism. The general look and feel with be light wood and gold.
The second work is a sister work called The Monstrance of Death, a darker mirror. Little is done yet.
And finally Eden, another circular cabinet work about environmental destruction which is unrelated to the other two. This is an ambitious engineering project that will be a suitable challenge, a large wall mounted work that will look like the sun and open to reveal a detailed painting.
But calloo! callay! My next days are full of the daily patter and rush of tidal forces, pushing me onwards, through the barrage of life!
Tomorrow: Friday 12th July: I'm setting up Masquerade and Celebrating The Diversity, the annual exhibition at The Cubby Hole in Crewe. The night will conclude with a masked ball. Here is my mask:
Saturday 13th July: I'm promoting the Art Up Close group on Nantwich square.
14th: To the R.B.S.A. Gallery in Birmingham with me to deliver one of my newest works, Love is Dead, to their Portrait Prize competition.
Monday: To Warrington and delivery of An Octopus Finally Killing A Lighthouse Which Is Assumpted Into An Angel to the Python arts festival, a major event spanning four galleries across the North of England.
Tuesday: A planned trip to the Visual Arts Cheshire Gallery in Northwich to meet the team there.
And then Wednesday and I can continue working on art for a short short SHORT few days. Oh for more time to make art. But soon, the summer will end and I'll stop visual art and the strains and strings on music will enforce themself upon me once more, for I can't wait to write my Death Symphony, which changes in my mind with each consideration, but now must be like Beethoven's Ninth in reverse, for it is now the symphony that is dead. I want Mark Elder to conduct it. Musically I'm listening to Bruckner for the first time, and Berlioz' Requiem. I rather like Berlioz. My next plan is to listen to more Elgar, who I suspect is much better than I suspected.
Olé!
