to show

against the setting sun south of ibrox we skidded on icy pavements. first north, then south. tried to cross the road, not to drop the paintings and not to get too overtly lost. all the while covering (a) urban politics; (b) the innecessity of expensive pavements but of occasional grit; (c) academic attitude that cannot be explained by habitus; (d) the between rather than the either/or; (e) berlin, frankfurt and glasgow as elsewheres; (f) whether to turn corners tightly or not; and really that this city is so definitely build for cars. all the while nonetheless getting lost at every possible corner, despite the googling.

finally, the paintings were dropped off, unscuffed by the ice. we laughed: really the only way to deliver paintings to the house for an art lover. and skidded on.

it does make me reconsider painting though. i have to admit.

the show. here.

Too many legs for those cranes

... there are some images that keep stirring around my head. One, are those of Lucia Noguiera's film Smoke (1996) that I saw in parts at the Tate on Tuesday. I wish I hadn't been so annoyed by Francis Alys's posturing and would have gone back again to see this rather quiet film about a performance involving kites, umbrellas, two kiosks, a bench and little else.

But: the other image is captured and a bit more considered than this glimpse at Smoke.
It involves a colourist woodblock print, done in the Great Norther Wastes somewhere in China, and is part of the current exhibition at the British Museum on The printed image in China.

 Country Sentiments/ Xiangqing by Hao Boyi (b. 1938), 1983,
Woodblock print in oil-based inks and colour on paper, c40x55cm

After having seen a couple of printmaking exhibitions in the gallery space of the BM I find the space too stuffy and archival for prints that were so clearly concerned with the world around those who made them, commissioned them and used them - like those in the Mexican revolution or now the 20c Chinese prints.

The texts that go alongside the prints are in part banal, in part patronising: either it's political as in propaganda, or it's not political as it concerns a landscape.

This print here is thus, arguably, about a backward, idyllic rural scene. Done by a generation of printmakers and other artists, the Beidahuang movement, who joined 100,000 demobbed soldiers in the late 1940s to 'cultivate' the plains.

The print caught me (unsurprisingly) for its colourist qualities: those fields of hue and contrast.
Yet, upon closer inspection:

• Why are there so many more legs than cranes?
• And, why does the sedge grow across the birds' bodies? 

Surely, the artist would have been able to match up his separate woodblocks in a way to match bird body with bird legs; and surely he would know that sedges don't grow on bird bodies?

So, why did he divert, subvert or at least distort such realistic representation of rural life in the Northern Wastes. I wonder if the author of the accompanying text is right with their comment that  such "nostalgic scene is typical of his lyrical, colourful style".

So, is political only accepted as party political ideology? Is there not so much more going on, that is not easily read from without? Says she, thinking of the great commentary that Frontier Blues provided of northern Iran, also part of the culture programme in the big city last week.

As for the printmaking:

• many of the prints make explicit use of water-based inks and how they disperse on damp paper. There are some very good examples of that, e.g., Dawn Melody/ Chen qu by Lu Fang (born 1932), 1983
• also: it seems common to handcolour part of the prints later
• as David Hockney mentioned, there is something curious going on with perspective. - It's obvious in some of the prints, such as Sunrise at Nanhu/Nanhu richy by Shi Handing (born 1930), 1981. - The horizon line is variable and objects don't necessarily recede. I need to have a closer look at this and what possibilities it affords.
• as to Hao Boyi, the artist of Country Sentiments, there seems plenty more of him around the inet. Look at his work and the context. Maybe I'll even find something about the missing cranes' bodies?

a glimpse at the opening preview

Monoprint, Freire, 25x50 cm on Tosa Shi paper

it's all framed and soon ready for the opening tomorrow:

Eldon Group Summer Exhibition 2010

Opening Preview
Saturday 1 May 2010
11am - 1pm

1-12 May, St Andrew's Gallery, University of Glasgow
Level 5, St Andrew's Building, 11 Eldon Street

Gallery open Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm
Saturdays 10am - 1pm
Closed Monday 3 May

Paintings in acrylics,
oil, mixed media,
works on paper

Thomas Bush
Emma Ceresa
Geraldine Crossan
Gesa Helms
Sarah-Jane Sharp
Pascale Steenkiste
Chris Turpie

in light

there is (no) matter.

this one - like bethan huws - was in my diary since december. and with attempt number three, i not only saw the matter that light makes, but so did my parents.

before we arrived, we laughed at the arrogant marketing that the City of Wolfsburg - Hitler's car city where the Beetle was first mass-produced - was of course with the Turrell's Wolfsburg Project the site of Turrell's largest installation in an exhibition space:

the main installation, Bridget's Bardo is a ganzfeld piece of two spaces that merge from one into the other: the viewing and the sensing space, separated by a sensor, you must not step into the viewing space. light changes and all the while you sense the view and wonder what that space is in front of you, a wall, a cube or simply nothing in colours that change as the light changes.

and you wonder and wonder. the separating between viewing and sensing space are sharp corners in space. but behind or in front of the planes become depths and you see nothing but colour. all around you and in so doing colour becomes you.

at the back of the installations are two rectangles, one at the top where the bridge lead down, one at the bottom where steps lead down to the floor below. of distinct and separate colour they appear as planes again, not as openings.

small groups of people spend ten minutes as light and are encouraged to go again, as many do. second time round i begin to see some shadows, not on the walls nor ceiling, but on the floor, looking back into the piece.

how crucial shadows are in helping you orientate yourself and to grasp dimensions, forward and backward and upright.

how do you mark light in the absence of shadows and spatial demarcations with any thing other than that pure light?

what form has fog and nothing than the absence of form?

the exhibition continues with some smaller installations, one (milk run iii, a spectral wedgework, 2002) operating in darkness with dark orange light and your perception as it plays a myriad of tricks on you; and plenty of illustrations of the roden crater project and some large scale aquatints Turrell made with experiments of light deprivation and selective openings of panels in the mendota hotel in california. here, the light modelled geometric objects which he captures on the aquatints. i found a link with images of this aquatint series, First Light (1989-90) at this site here.

and i thought i'd add this video here too: about another skyspace and roden crater. enjoy!

vorfreude

... happy anticipation.

it's been in my diary for months now, and after seeing singing to the sea by bethan huws, i'm very much looking forward to an afternoon among text, crosswords, installations and a bit of video.

bethan huws il est comme un saint dans sa niche: il ne bouge pas, kestner gesellschaft, hannover 

hehehe, and with such an announcement i am creating a bit of zugzwang* for myself to write about it afterwards.

*being forced to make a move, usually metaphorically

Eldon Group Show 2010

amidst all else, here's final a draft flier for the Eldon Group show 2010. While the group composition is in a bit of flux and may change, the opening preview is set.
Saturday 1 May, 11am - 1pm,
St Andrew's Gallery, University of Glasgow.

All else on this flier

Paul McCarthy The Painter

is currently on display in a wooden box in Edinburgh's Dean Gallery. the wooden box is situated within their permanent room of the Paolozzi Studio, a sedate, if busy, still life assemblage of Eduardo Paolozzi's studio.

the box in which the film is screened on a loop is temporary, two temporary seats propped in two corners, the sound is poor. people came in, watched a bit, quickly left, an older couple left, came back for another look, came back again for another look. inside the wooden box, the busy noises of the gallery were constant.

education of contemporary art, in particular its means of productions, its economy and how it produces individual genius out of shit, who in turn inhabit the squalor. the box inside the studio as deliberate education too: look at what we can do by setting up a provocation, of creating a tension between two representations of art production.

I am doing an "art sale"

... how I laughed when I finally realised it:

I've been inviting people to a party. The invite is  a bit vague what it's about - with my assumption that it's yet perfectly clear: it is my leaving party. Though 'leaving party' makes a rubbish theme, and is thus omitted from the titling.

But then one of my close friends - who should know what it is about, since August at the very latest - said: oh, you're having a party because you want to sell your paintings! I: Nohoo... it's my 'thank you and until hopefully soon' party. Reply: But it says art sale on the invite I: Yehess... among ten other things.

So, it is really an "art sale" not an art sale, a "leaving party" not a leaving party. Hahaha... what's in a title, heh?

But, the inverted commas (which in German are curiously called Little Geese Feet - I am not making this up) did not stop me spending a large part of the weekend with curating and figuring out what kind of schedule I want to make. My latest prototype is an explosion booklet:

- but I also very much enjoyed hers:

This is an "art exhibition"

Tuesday and Wednesday, Libby, Michelle and I had been hanging out in the coffee area of our department to wait for people to drop by with some objects for the Home is... project.

So, over a number of hours, we sat around, organised, discussed and curated an emerging exhibition. We talked about the use of this weird space that is the communal space in our department, we talked about our contributions and what other people brought, we talked about what we may do with this in the Viewing event next Tuesday.

We also arranged the room differently, turned the table around, moved the chairs around, left a sheet of paper with Names, Titles and media to be added.

When we came back, the 'catalogue' had disappeared, the chairs where back in line and of course, the cleaners had done their work as usual.

So, we rearranged, wrote a note, asking for contributions from the cleaners and asked not to move the furniture.

The note was titled:

This is an "art exhibition"

While for Michelle and myself, it's an art exhibition, Libby insists on an "art exhibition". How intriguing: surveying, measuring and filling the space between research and art. And how the three of us fill it very differently:

• Proposing to hang the pieces either with Bluetak, on board/behind glass or by spirit level and measure tape.
• Inviting people to give titles to their objects or not.
• Wanting to record responses in a variety of ways.

What we do is familiar to all of us, for Libby and myself as part of explorative research methods, for Michelle and I as part of an art exhibition.

I am so curious what our colleagues are making of this - but going by the contributions and various emails en lieu of object contributions, next week's event is looking very promising. Both as "art exhibition" and art exhibition.

Home is where the heart is

I had mentioned a while back that one of the small ongoing projects is one with a colleague at work and an artist, Michelle Letowska. The title and theme of Michelle's project is that of home, people's needs and the urban environment.

Home is where the heart is:
Who are the people and what do they need?
Everyone will have his or her own idea of what are fundamental human needs, and the role that home plays in fulfilling our human needs. Human ecologist Alistair McIntosh has adapted Manfred Max-Neef’swheel of fundamental human needs to give parity to water, food, fuel, shelter, protection, participation, identity, understanding, creativity, transcendence and
affection.

As dwellers in cities, we are witness to, and interact with, theoutside structures which most people occupy –tenements, town houses, high flats, maisonettes, bungalows, cottages. What kind of homes do these external walls house? What kinds of homes do those without
external walls of shelter create? How do we live? How do others live?
How does the way we live reflect our human needs and ability to fulfil these? Where can we see that fulfilment in the structures of ourbuilt environment? When does a place become a home?

This project invites participants from across the department of Urban Studies (postgraduate students, researchers, support staff and academic staff) to explore these questions with each other. We invite you to contribute images, photographs, drawings or objects, madeor
found (anything at all!) that reflects your own experience of home. These items will be displayed, as a temporary and informal exhibition, in the coffee area of the department. The exhibition will be a starting point for a discussion on human needs, and the role we all play in providing these, for ourselves and for others.

It will take the form of a found objects exhibition in what is the commons space within our department. A much neglected communal space at the best of times. And that will be an interesting point in its own right.

Michelle (who has a blog at http://omeiswheretheartis.blogspot.com/) is interested in doing an Artist in Residence project within the department as this should be one of the first projects to explore this further.

With all my travelling back and forth and here and there and ensuing change of stuff I'm very intrigued by this project. It also resonates with a conference one of my friends is organising on Transit.

Currently, I'm favouring the following as temporary contribution:

My mother's layered apple cake. The favourite of all my grandparents' for Sunday coffees, my brother and I failed to see why. But here, the passing of time and some physical distance is rather productive in generating memories. It's currently in the oven in my favourite flat in Berlin, waiting for T. & I. to come back from a cycle tour, just needs some whipped cream and good coffee alongside it.

500g flour
20g fresh yeast
1 egg
80g butter
80g sugar
pinch of salt
1/4l lukewarm milk.

Make a yeast dough of the above, let it prove.

Take a (preferably deep) oven tray, roll out one half of the dough for bottom layer.

1.5 kg sharp apples, sliced and cooked with a bit of water, some sugar and a pinch of cinnamon.

Layer the cooked apples on top.

Roll out remaining dough, place carefully on top.

The top, before the cake is put into the hot oven (fan-assisted at 170C, 30min), is speckled with flecks of butter, some sugar and chopped almonds.

Bake. Smell. Let cool. Smell some more. Eat.

Home.... such a fluid concept.

Exhibition rewind

Tom Bush, Untitled, Acrylics on Canvas, 20x20cm

Last Wednesday we finally took down the Eldon Group exhibition after four weeks. If you remember - we got a two week extension. Here a few thoughts on past and future...

1. Preparation and logistics.
Second time rounds are so much easier. So we had a good idea of what needed doing and we pretty much kept the division of labour as we had before: S-J organised the flyer and did much of the marketing; I saw to getting postcards, organising communication between all involved and with the gallery. All of this worked pretty well. In particular the communication with the people in charge of the gallery space went a lot smoother. We probably should have had a more concerted effort to get our flyers in key locations. Setting up on the day before rather than the afternoon before was by far the better way of doing this.

2. Opening event, opening times and location
We had a good turnout for the opening event. Interestingly, very few of the people that I thought would come, turned up but others instead. Last year, many of my colleagues came along - it being 4pm on a Friday afternoon made for a convenient end of the week with drinks. The first two weeks of the show were still during term time which gave better access to the gallery space in evenings and Saturday mornings (but not over Bank Holiday). The opening times and the location are still the main weakness of the event though - the space itself works very well (though the hanging system is fiddly and the lighting is a bit sparse).

3. Who visited and who bought
While most of my colleagues didn't make the opening, the people who came actually bought art. We sold 6 or 7 pieces on the first night. And Tom and I sold pieces after that. All the later sales actually happened when I took people I knew (colleagues or friends) along. - I am only realising this now. Interesting. So, I sold around 10 pieces - all of them prints, mixed media or pastel drawings. And the people who bought all knew me personally, some of them had in fact bought some of my stuff beforehand. They knew me either through work or the art classes. Our visitor's book did get a much wider number of comments from people either working in the building or also coming to see the show. In fact, every time I was there during the first two weeks, there were other people there too. - Which I found rather encouraging for the location it's in.

4. And what do I think other than all of the above?
Well - despite the prep and logistic going well, it still took up an enormous amount of time - probably 50hrs or so in the weeks leading up to it. So my evenings and weekends were fully devoted to the preps. It's quite enjoyable but rather overwhelming when doing in addition to other things. That also meant that I wasn't able to make much use of the two-week extension: at that point work was so busy that I didn't even manage a group email to announce it, let alone follow up some earlier expressions of interest or distribute another round of flyers. We had discussed asking some of the galleries nearby to come along also, but again that didn't happen due to lack of time. I only had three paintings framed professionally, which proved the right decision. I framed prints in clip frames, which I like esthetically BUT: that was one of the most time-consuming jobs, they look easy but clearly AREN'T!). Everything I sold was sitting in the portfolios on tables rather than hanging on the wall. I do really want to 'lose' some of the framed paintings though - no space for them. But other than that, I'm very pleased with having sold several pieces, and my right decision to include many of the lower priced pieces - in particular the linocuts were popular.

5. And next?
Two proposals to be done: one for in three years, one for in two years. And next year the St Andrews Gallery again. I'm surprised what 'continuity' emerged with a second time round - people kept referring to last year's show. The Eldon Group does have a nice wee space of existence and that spaces feels rather comfortable and friendly. That's one of the best outcomes from this year's show. It's also nice that my friends and colleagues are rather taken with Tom's paintings - as am I.

Like with the one above. - It also acquired a new title (but don't tell Tom): Pandora's Box. Just like this one of Tom's is now The One who Got Away.

Tom Bush, Untitled, Acrylics on Canvas, 20x20cm

PS: the blog is having its own mind at the moment
(as it in fact had most of the week so far;
i.e. I'm generally neither here nor there
and now on way to Bristol and Bath for the weekend)
... not that you think I am ignoring your many comments :)
Have a very good weekend.

Due to popular demand:

Our Eldon Group Summer Exhibition Gig will be running for two more weeks - until Wednesday 17 June:

!!! Exhibition Extended until 17 June 2009 !!!

Summer Exhibition 2009

Eldon GROUP

20 May – 17 June 2009

Open Monday to Friday 9 am - 5 pm

St Andrew's Gallery, University of Glasgow

Level 5, St Andrew's Building, 11 Eldon St, Glasgow

So, if you haven't been... go!

See the updated exhibition website

Tom Bush, Untitled x8, Acrylic on board, 20x20cm*

'Popular demand' sound very cool... in fact, whoever was to follow our show didn't get their act together on time, so we can have their slot too. But... psht...

* Two of these are mine now (momentarily), I think M. knows which ones... can't leave those boxes alone..

Eldon Group exhibition: Fancy a virtual tour?

Come along and have a look.

All went well and was also very good fun. About 40 people turned up on Wednesday evening and it was very relaxed and enjoyable. Each one of us with something to sell sold at least one piece at the opening, and the feedback we've been getting since has been very positive.

My favourite piece?

Memories of the Fife Coast by Chris Turpie
Oil on Canvas, 36x26ins

They were duly hung

... after so few tiny, tiny waves...


Now... drinks anyone? Tomorrow at 6pm?

All new on the sidelines

My brother (haalloo, Torben!) tends to mock that I really don't need much else on my comp other than firefox: all this money of the comp wasted on my single application usage.

Hah!

Today I used: well, firefox, and firefox, and firefox. AND:
- Flickr Uploader (well, that kind of plays into T's hands, I suppose)
- Thunderbird
- Word, but then:

- Komposer
- FileZilla
- Gimp and X11
- Photoshop Elements

[oh, and I must admit, I was instantly smitten with having a photoshop application on my comp again; well: I am really trying with Gimp but, hach... I kind of get that you can do a lot of things with it, but it needs a lot of running around in order to get to do them, and it's more 'into the depth of my comp' running around, I fear. So, I bought an educational copy of Elements and downloaded the trial version while I'm waiting. Rather worringly though: within 10 minutes I run up against its limits: it cannae convert monitor to print colour mode... that's not very good! For that I may just have to figure out Gimp a bit more?]

and I persevered... it meant that I missed out on the sunshine on the seashore plan but instead:

- my photos from Chile are kind of sorted and look at you and me from high above the Andes on the sidebar.

But more importantly:

Eldon Group Summer Exhibition 2009
20 May - 3 June 2009
St Andrew's Gallery, University of Glasgow

Opening party 20 May 6-8pm (with cold white wine this time!)

I finally managed to extract images from S-J's Publisher file; and even more so: overcome my intense aversion to web design and scrambled together an okish (well, rather basic, really) update of our exhibition announcement. High time for that... - though I still haven't replaced the images from last year.

My firefoxing today eventually included something I tend to dislike even more than html: putting stuff on ebay. Eventually, my growing box of redundant electronics is getting a bit of fresh air (a spare laptop keyboard anyone? or a router?), and while I was looking at it, I discovered that my old laptop may be still worth something...

and I also designed the postcards for Tom, Chris and myself for the exhibition.

Do you want a sneak preview?

Views of Glasgow from a Height
Oil on Canvas, 60x65cm
(c) Chris Turpie

Untitled,
Acrylics on Board, 20x20cm
(c) Tom Bush

Three, three, one
Pastel on board

Yesterday, we begun to discuss what we are going to hang on the walls, and how, and, and... Second time round it is actually a lot easier - well, maybe that's to do with the changed group dynamics too. I haven't quite got round to thinking about what will go in from my recent stuff - ... well, I've got til next Saturday to make up a my mind, then we'll do a mock-run.

Now: put up more larger pieces on Etsy. - Strangely (but very nicely STRANGELY), my larger sketches and paintings have been doing rather well there...

Paintings I like - without a horizon

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1969
Acrylic on canvas, 234x200cm
Collection of Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko's work has a similar effect on me as Joan Eardley's. It just swallows me up... gulp... I'm gone. The paintings are left.

It's quietly sombre contemplative. The scale and the colour are just all that is there. I had been looking forward to the Tate Exhibition and kept wandering through the rooms, back and forth. The scale of paintings, the different series - 15 or so of the Seagram Murals in one room; the Black form paintings, Brown on Grey and Black on Grey. Fabulous.

There were two comments that stuck.

One was a conversation I overheard in the room with the black on black series: such variety in black (red, brown, green and blue ones; opaque, transclucent, matt, shiney). An elderly couple sat next to me. Her emotional response to the black was straightforward: "He must have been such a sad person." And she was clearly distraught by all the black she saw.

That's it. Enough said. You see, you read, you associate painting=painter.

Have a look at the series in question for yourself. The Tate has the exhibition online... here is the link to the Black Form Paintings

Similar to the Twombly exhibition, I had taken an audio guide - actually much more: a nice touch screen, music, stories, additional images. Very nicely done! And not in this room but in a later room, the curator commented on Rothko's association with the Abstract Expressionists. He, the curator was doubtful, commenting along the lines that while Rothko intended and experimented intensely with the evocation of emotional responses by the viewers of his paintings, the paintings themselves don't tell us all that much about Rothko the person, they are thus not particularly expressive/expressionist.

Interesting thought. I'll keep that.

The other one was the commentary on the last series: Black on Grey. In various sizes, formats, different borders surrounding them.

Instruction #1 for that room: This is not a horizon line. Don't read it as such.

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1969
Acrylic on canvas, 206x236cm
Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel

And here is the Black on Grey room

That is difficult - not to read it as horizon line. But I'm trying - and the painting is all the better for it. Brian had commented on abstraction as the barest hint at something, to be filled in. Let me fill that thought a bit further - or take it elsewhere.

• The whole exhibiton is online with a lot of additional material. See the link here
• Casey over at the Colorist has a lot good things to say about Rothko too

A throw of the dice for Dora Maar

While in Berlin I indeed - again - did not make it to the Bruecke Museum. But: I made it here:

The Klee Universe at the Neue Nationalgallerie

After the exhibition - which indeed was a universe (250+ paintings on which more later) - I had a coffee in the cafe. Sat there and marvelled at the vibrancy of the German educated middle classes on a November Tuesday early afternoon, and at the successes of the tourism industry in metropolitan Berlin... 12 Euros for the ticket, the 5 Euros for the audio guide I refused. But: I didn't have to pay for the cloakroom (!); yet on that count had a bit of a run in with one of the doormen who refused my bag entrance. Even my arguments that I saw plenty of bigger bags in the exhibition didn't count (probably because those bags were several hundred Euros dearer than mine).

So, while I sat there and watched, I noticed the posters on the wall. Looked up and saw Dora with her green fingernails watching the ongoings too. How cool. What a surprise. She was advertising the exhibition at Museum Berggruen that M. and I had visited in July. I hadn't even noticed that she was on the poster before.

Na, anyways, I eat a bit more of my quiche and keep watching. And then I notice another exhibition advert: Un coup de dès - writing turned image - an exhibition in Vienna.

A throw of the dice for Dora Maar. I wonder what she'd made of the ever-presence of chance. On that wall, amongst a few exhibition posters.

Un coup de dès pour Dora Maar
Pen and neo ii on Moleskine
24x21cm

And the plan involves...

some of this tomorrow:

Mark Rothko: The Late Series Exhibition at the Tate Modern

Rothko

Uploaded by halighalie on 29 Jun 07, 9.57PM GMT.

Can't wait... an afternoon with Rothko. And I need to sit on that bench again which allows you to look at Pollock, Rothko and Monet all at once. What a marvellous little seat that is [here].


Plan 2 doesn't really count: this has been on my list of 'Things to do when in Berlin' for years... somehow that list always shrinks into 'meeting people', but nonetheless, I'll try again.

Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner - Print graphics in colour
Exhibition, Bruecke Museum Berlin

One of E-L Kirchner's woodcuts made it on the cover of my printmaking journal. So, as an intro to some discussion on organising the writing around the printmaking course, here's the cover for starters. And I'll tell you in ten days whether or not I made it to the museum this time round.

Well... a woodcut by Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner,
any details: currently in transit to my tutor

'Pick up your rejects'

... I've been waiting to write on this - something I did a few weeks ago. But while the jury was out, I thought any sustained slagging on my part would be unwise, seeing that they had my web details.

Well, so the jury's been out on a number of pieces.

Firstly the St John Art Sale - glad that part of me treated it as a piece of social experiment: how do art sales go if people are losing their pensions, worry about their homes and jobs, etc... So, while I remembered a good sale last year, I was kind of cautious when we went to pick up the paintings.
And indeed, not one of them had sold; being curious, I began to quiz people a bit about the sale, but I didn't get very far - 'oh, not too bad considering...'; 'ach, ok... we sold quite a few pieces'. Watching the pages of the entries as she was flicking through them to find mine, none of the 5-6 pages I saw had any sales recorded against them - last year they had sold about 25% of the paintings and weren't too ecstatic about that.

So, the fluffy pieces are on loan to a different friend this time...


Secondly, I got mail - I've been waiting really on two pieces of mail - one job related, one art stuff; I did get two pieces of mail, both art stuff.

One was a rejection letter from the Royal Glasgow Institute for the two collages I submitted earlier the month for their Annual Exhibition. In many ways I'm not too sad about it. It was one of the weirder experiences handing the pieces in. There was little info on the website, so we went - and rightly I had suspected that no info was communicated because the ones in the know already knew procedures, hanging mechanisms, conventions, abbreviations and much more. I didn't. So while I was battling with my nerves and tried hard to fill in forms without any mistake... 'Degree? Does my PhD count?' 'Nope: art degrees'; 'Which of the letters W O P A S etc stands for mixed media?', M. was observing.
So afterwards, as my adrenaline was returning to normal levels, she commented extensively: did you notice this, that, the other? I hadn 't clocked anything, but just felt that I was part of some art event that - if it would be something to do with academia - I would go to great lengths to avoid being part of it. So: a pretty alright outcome. And: I love my two collages! Pah!

But: the second art letter was unexpected. And it was handwritten on the outside... from the Pastel Journal.

Remember my struggles to find a painting that consisted of 80% pastel back in September? It is going to be printed in the April 2009 Pastel Journal. - As an Honourable Mention in the Abstract/Non-objective category, they chose Three Three One as one of 100 pastels to feature in the magazine. They claim they get about 4000 submissions. That is pretty cool. I like it. What a good thing to do. And did I say: they will print one of my paintings! A painting in print! Now I need to figure out how to get a good transparency done of it.

Three Three One (Detail)
Pastel and Acrylics on Board, 47x32cm

So, I happily pick up my rejects on 3/4 November.

Recyclings

I've been spending part of the day with a bit of framing DIY - the four fields in oil are getting ready for an art sale later on this week. Hanging mechanisms need to be different and I wanted to make the floater frames a bit more secure at the back - last year some of the frames came back damaged and I don't want anybody accidentally piercing my canvas. While I tend to get a bit impatient with these kind of things, it's all the same a nice way of generally doing something with the canvasses.

Glasgow School of Art, Evening Class Annual Exhibition 2007

In the process, I noticed pencilled addresses, phone numbers and details on the back of my favourite painting in the lot. And remembered, that it is already in its third incarnation: firstly, a rather shortlived attempt at a cityscape in acrylics; that got whitened out, acquired some raw umber oil underpainting and a rather unfinished male torso for last year's GSA evening class exhibition - well: mine is the most unfinished, unframed one at the far end, bottom row.

I just couldn't get myself to spending several weeks at painting one shoulder, and was indeed a bit upset that they chose that painting - which was clearly so far from finished - as part of the exhibition. But never mind.

The painting didn't survive long after the exhibition: whitened out again it became part of my winter fields in oil series. I like it a lot better that way. The nice thing of this recycling however is that the surface by now feels very rich and dense. Nice to the touch, so to speak, really: the whole point of any painting, don't you think?

Primaries, Oil on canvas, 80x70cm

Here are the details for looking at it (and the other three); possibly even touching it? If nobody else is looking, that is.

St John Art Sale
Friday 17 Oct 4-8.30pm
Saturday 18 Oct 10-5pm
Sunday 19 Oct 11-4.15pm

Pollokshields Burgh Hall
Maxwell Park
Glencairn Drive,
Glasgow

BTW: there's a coffee shop with home baking, says the flyer... and you can of course buy the paintings :)