Mr Lion Exhibition at Turner Contemporary Gallery

Call of the Wild painting

I'm part of an arts group, Blank Canvas that meets at Turner Contemporary most weeks. We have been working on a project using an old card of Mr Lion that the lead artist Lucy Steggals found.
Lucy's website here.http://lucysteggals.co.uk/

This mysterious character has been explored through a variety of mediums including, photography, print, sound and stage and we have put together an exhibition which will open at Turner Contemporary on the 10th of February  till 23rd of March. Tuesday to Sundays

The opening event is on the 10th 4.30 till 6.30pm everyone welcome.  link to the exhibition on the gallery's site here  I am showing my painting, Call of the Wild.

I've been continuing to work on my Mr Lion sketchbook and would like to continue exploring the lions that were at Dreamland in Margate. I especially like the stories of lions being walked on Margate beach.

There is a great exhibition of self portraits on at Turner Contemporary too called self. More about that later.

Altered photographs

I have been playing around with one of my tree photographs, using various filters and digital manipulations.

I like the way it changes my own relationship to the original image, allowing me to see it in a new way and to see more possibilities in further work on the picture. I also like the fact that the image can become more painterly, showing me new ways that I could work with paint to depict the tree.

The original photograph was taken while I was on retreat at The Seekers Trust in Addington Kent.
An Oak tree that was often used by the jackdaws and crows to perch on.


The sort of  negative photographic effect of the darker tree image appealed to me, as well as the paler version with the white tree trunk. The original photograph is in the centre of the post.

Work on the Mr Lion Project

I have been working on some pieces for the Mr Lion project that we have been exploring in Blank Canvas at the Turner Contemporary Gallery. Link to Blank Canvas facebook page here.

Artist Lucy Steggals suggested the project following her own exploration of other figures from a series of old cards she found. Lucy's website here.

It has been an interesting few months, also working with other artists, playing around with ideas about Mr Lion's character, where he might live, what possessions he might have and what he looks like amongst other things.

We all have different ideas about Mr Lion and will be showing some of these in an exhibition, details to follow.

I have an artists book made from Japanese paper, collage and print, using the letters of the name Mr Lion and have a sketch book where I have been keeping ideas.

Winter landscape sketches

I have started to do some quick sketches this year, with pen and ink and water soluble pencil crayons. I'll add watercolours and other mixed media too as I continue to make a sketch a day.                          

The main theme for these works will be trees either from life, photos or from my imagination, so I can explore a range of ideas, but in a fairly spontaneous way.

I'm posting some of these pictures from my tablet, so I'm not sure how the format is going to look like. But it makes posting a bit easier for thse pieces.