Spent much of yesterday checking competition dates and organising. I may enter the Stockport Open next week, and checked my RWA entries. I didn't enter the RWA last year, so I could enter those planned pieces this year (only on my first attempt in 2016 did I have a painting selected for the RWA; 10 years, I tried again in 2017, 2018, 2023, 2024).
Wrote about brushes in my How to Paint book in the afternoon, before the drop-off to Cotebrook Village Hall near Tarporley, of which the launch is later today.
Also scanned many painting ideas which I thought were good, that deserved to be painted. Idea after idea seem brilliant, deserving of being seen, being painted. Almost tearful at them and the huge lack of visibility for these. I sized the ideas and marked the paper. I needed criteria of which to paint. Many are distinctively mine, many have pathos - these are two key criteria; but what will be their destination? Most of my art over the years has simply say here, unseen or rarely seen. I enter competitions and exhibitions, and now have a gallery to sell works, but much of my work isn't commercial in the decorative sense. Some would suit museums, the Kafka portrait for the Kafka Museum, 'Self Inspection At Theresienstadt' for the Jewish Museum, or in Israel, with Fritta's. The Dadd painting should be in the Tate; yet most of my work would really need a Mark Sheeky Museum because it barely fits anywhere else.
I can charge into painting, I can paint faster than ever, and this year my plans are for larger paintings. This means that each painting takes longer, costs more in materials and resources, and takes up more storage space, but large works are more easily sold and more impressive in any event, so perhaps larger is better, except that it limits quantity of art because larger paintings take more time.
It's interesting that my work largely emulates Dali's in size; a huge variety from tiny to large, though I rarely paint over 1M (The Invisible Woman is 69x120, Revelation 120x74). Most competitions now limit size to under 1M, and these are hard to show or transport anywhere. The new gallery will be my first chance in years to show and sell these large works. Revelation, for example, is unframed and have only been shown for one day during our first Fall in Green performance, 14 Jul 2017
