New paintings and E17 Art Trail.

I've still been busy working on some more paintings for the next couple of exhibitions and getting things ready for the E17 Art Trail.
My paintings, Stones Guard the Mysteries of Earth, above and Night of Mysteries below, both include standing stones. In the painting above, the colour of the harvest and corn came first in the work, evolving into swirling cornfields reflecting the patterns of the wind. As I was contemplating this new landscape it seemed to include the idea of a stone circle. Stones that definately bore symbols of the Goddess and ancient ritual and seemed to protect the land and the entrance to the underworld. The deer still resting at the start of a new day brought a sense of calm and balance with her and the whole painting came alive for me with a sense of beauty and completeness.

In Night of Mysteries, the landscape took on the tones of a night sky illuminated by a full moon that also arrived early in the painting. I was feeling a sense of mystery evolving with a strangely more alive sense and resonance to the standing stones. The stones are marked with symbols and have taken on some of the colours from the night sky. Stylized and symbolic trees stand on the horizon and a stag is running across the land looking back over his shoulder; as if also recognising the strong presence of the stones. I was left thinking do they really walk at night?

Dawn Fires page with exhibition details here

Two other small paintings are work in progress and I am pleased so far to be touching a weath of symbolic and mystical themes that are bringing together a lot of my strands of work.

On a completely different note I am continuing with the year long Street Photography Project, which will be continuing in some form after the year has end

ed. Project info here.

I have entered one of my photographs, Protest on the Streets, in at The Mill, info here, as part of the E17 Art Trail. E17 link here

I am also helping on the drawing event in the Vestry House Museum gardens on 3rd September 11-3pm.

Art Grows on Trees is also happening again this year and will have even more art works offered for free on each Saturday of the art trail. Sat 3rd and 10th of September on the lime trees next to Walthamstow bus station from 9.30 am. info here

New Paintings and exhibitions

I've been working hard on a series of new paintings for some exhibitions comimg up in the Autumn with some friends of mine. The top painting is called Landscape of Ancient Dreams. It's an acrylic on board and I'm pleased with the colours of the acrylics and the glow of all those moons!

Often in this form of painting my process is highly intuitive, I don't ask many questions of myself and just let things arrive in the picture at first. Later I will spend quite a long time just looking at the work and seeing if all the elements work together, if more aspects need to be added or changed and if the colours represent the forms. As I was painting Landscape of Ancient Dreams the moons kept "arriving" on the picture and in fact I had to leave a few out! The symbolism of Egyptian culture, Buddhism and China seemed to want to be part of the landscape, although the land itself is British.

There are the trees that usually inhabit my work and an entrance to an underground tunnel or cave which has the symbols of lotus and moon and star from ancient Egyptian tradition. The tree above the entrance is symbolic of the tree of life and holds the owl as a symbol of wisdom.




The next picture is called Elements of Earth and follows a similar pastel I did of the same subject. In this picture are references to the start of life, the large sun's rays are reaching down and some are actually touching the earth. I have this sense of indistinct shapes in the ground and others like seeds waiting to break into life.
There is a tree of life just to one side whose roots stretch deep into the earth and a spirit of birds hinting at the life in the skies and the sprit of human life.

These and other paintings( I will put on the next blog) will be showing at Fuggles Studio and Gallery near Bridport in Dorset 1st till 28th of September. info about the gallery here

Then at The Atlantis Bookshop Museum street London 17th till 29th October info about Atlantis Bookshop here

Art Car Boot Fair

The annual Art Car Boot fair, info here was held off Brick Lane again on the 19th June. I always enjoy the mix of stalls and sense of a little bit of anarchy in the event. In the end Peter Blake couldn't make it apparently, but Gavin Turk, Billy Childish, Pam Hogg and taxidermist Polly Morgan, (whose tiny quail chicks on toothbrushes were in the news), were some of the artists there.

There were ques all day for the limited edition prints by more well known artists like Damien Hurst and Tracey Emin, but even at £200 were too expensive for my pocket. I bought a small sketch book with printed cover and a surprise art work (in this case a drawing on one of the pages) which I liked the idea of, by Tangent projects.website here I found some retro badges I liked and a tombola where for £1 a ticket you won photographs from The Outsideworld gallery site here

Penguin Books were selling their design your own cover books and I bought a few before a real short thundery downpour fell on us all. Now I just need the time and inspiration to design the covers. Again an idea I really liked, there are only a few titles but you can buy them from here
I suppose you could also just cover or take off the cover of any book and re-design it too.



Performance artist Jessica Voorsanger had a Star Trek inspired stall full of Tribbles, I'm not sure if she was selling many Tribbles but I appreciated her fun idea. I also liked the idea of an improvement clinic, a stall where you could take your art work to be improved.



With a free art work from You Must Undo, a printed poster with the words"good for nothing" I had my sort of bargain day out.

Chelsea Flower Show

Last weekend was the Chelsea Flower Show, I always enjoy being surrounded by the gardens and plants. This year a lot of the gardens had a very subdued palette of colours, which wasn't helped by it being the coldest Chelsea that I've been to for some years. There had been some sunny days in the week, but on Saturday when I went the weather had turned cool and showery.


Diarmuid Gavin's pink pod flying garden (Irish Sky Garden)had been profiled in the media all week, and it was certainly rather surreal. Some visitors were having a go in the pod, with as it was hoisted into the air by a huge crane. Of course it was the crane that made it all rather unrealistic for any type of garden, but as a bit of fun it worked.

The goldfish swimming in a large glass table also qualified as rather strange or surreal in the B&Q garden. The garden also had vertical planters showing how to grow food in a small space, and a wall with all sorts of spaces and homes for insects.

I liked the Magistrates Garden, with it's bench,the word bench carved into it, structural London Plane trees and a lovely, well planted vertical green wall.

The marquee was full of great stands of plants, trees and flowers, and is always a pleasure to look round. I love the mix of perfume on the air, even though I seem to have hayfever over the last few years. One of the most amazing stands was a Thai temple and elephants, woven with flowers, from the Thai Botanical Gardens. It stood out with it's amazing colours of pink, red, blue/green and yellow.