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Autumn Report – 2017

November 18th 2017

Autumn report

It has been quite a busy time since the summer with quite a lot of work done and exhibited.

The “Landshapes” exhibition at Dean Clough in Halifax ended in early September and Nita and I had another very enjoyable over-night trip down through the Yorkshire Dales, to collect my work.  Unfortunately none of my eight pieces sold during the course of the exhibition, but it was a very good experience taking part and meeting several of the other artists at the preview.  Interestingly, a couple who saw the exhibition then drove all the way back up from Yorkshire to see more of my work at the studio.

In October the artists at the Courtyard Studios held our annual Open Studios Weekend and this coincided with our annual Courtyard Studios Group Exhibition at the Harbour Arts Centre.  Both events went very well, with around 350 visitors to the studios over the weekend of October 7th and 8th.  The exhibition, which ran for about six weeks, was a pretty strong show I think, with some really good work on display.  Thanks to Maree for making such a good job of co-ordinating the Open Weekend and to Brian for doing such an excellent job of hanging the group exhibition.  With such a broad range of work by 15 different artists, it must have been quite a task!

This summer saw the final completion of a project I started several years ago.  The idea was to create a series of five 80 x 80cm oil paintings based on a walk Nita and I did on Canisp in May 2015.  The weather that day was pretty violent with torrential rain and hail showers battering their way across the wild Assynt landscape.  Our plan had been to walk Canisp via its south eastern slopes, but by the time we had got up onto the broad back of the hill, the heavy showers had arrived, blown along by a very strong gusting wind.  The cloud descended to quite low levels at times as the showers raced by, but in between, there were brief bursts of sunshine lighting up the wet rocky landscape and of course, there were plenty of rainbows as a result.  With the weather being so rough though, we decided against continuing all the way to the summit and instead, from a high point of about 600m we descended north down steep slopes to a small loch situated amongst vast areas of boulders and small crags that had leads of moss and grass running through them.  As we started to make our way across this area we were caught in one of the biggest showers of the day.  The hail was just something else, battering down on us with tremendous force.  We just stood waiting for it to ease.  As it did, Canisp started to reappear, rising up behind us.  The sun came out briefly through a break in the cloud and made for a breathtaking scene.

Even while we walked back that day, I was already having a vague idea for doing not just one painting, but a small series of paintings based around the day.  I started the first piece quite soon after returning to Irvine but 2015 and 2016 were so busy, especially with The Oregon Project, that by the start of this year, I only had one of the pieces completed and another two on the go.  I had figured out five compositions based on various viewpoints throughout the walk and so once we had finished our exhibition in the Tent Gallery, Edinburgh in April, I was able to get back to work on this Canisp project.  The final two paintings are being framed as I type and I am hoping to find a place to exhibit all five pieces together……hopefully sometime next year.  Any galleries out there, who might be interested in showing these works, please get in touch.   Below are images of the five paintings presented in a slideshow:

As I said in my summer report, Graham Byron and I have been working on a new audio visual piece and this has developed well over the last few months.  The piece is technically far simpler than The Oregon Project last year.  I wanted to try and make a piece in which the sound element was a really integral part of the painting…. and the painting an integral part of the audio.  In other words, I didn’t want to use the sound just for audio interpretive purposes, although the sound will still work in this way for anyone with sight loss who visits the work.  After much thought, Graham and his colleague Drew Kirkland, came up with the solution.  This was to mix a single long soundtrack, but engineer it to 5:1 surround sound.  Different elements of the sound would be heard through different speakers.  This seemed like a very good way to take things and the new piece is well under way.  It is based on a series of sound recordings I made one day back in May when Nita and me walked a track along the northern shores of the sea-loch near Kylesku in Sutherland. From these, Graham mixed an initial eight minute long sound track and with this playing in my studio, I have been creating a new oil painting.  The piece is 120 x 120cm and it is based on my memories of the loch-side location as well as my interpretation, through line and texture, of the sounds I heard there.   The painting is almost finished now and I see it rather as a kind of natural graffiti!

Kylesku audio painting

When I worked on The Oregon Project, I came up with the idea of including the sounds of the actual drawing process.  I want to do something similar with this new piece and Graham and I are planning to book a local hall, (which has good acoustics) to record the sounds the various brush strokes make.  Graham will then include these into the final mix.

Although the piece was only partially complete, we decided to get it up and running ready for the Open Weekend.  We had a pretty good response from the visitors that weekend and as a result, were given a short slot in the Barony Centre in West Kilbride, (as part of their Vertex Festival of new music and art”.  This time we were able to exhibit the piece in a proper space with perfect acoustics and with enough space to place the speakers properly.  I have to say, that even with a partially completed sound track and painting, the piece worked well and once again we had a very favourable response.  Apparently the folk at the Barony Centre have talked about the possibility of getting the work back when it is completely finished.  I do hope so as it is a fantastic venue for the arts.  Watch this space.

A sad bit of news ……’the gallery on the corner’ to close

Yesterday evening Nita and I travelled through to Edinburgh to attend what was the final event at ‘the gallery on the corner’.

As you’ll remember this magnificent little gallery was set up by the charity ‘Autism Initiatives Scotland’ back in April 2010. The gallery had a dual purpose; to work as a professional gallery supporting artists affected by autism or other health issues …..in short, the idea was for it to be an inclusive gallery. Its second role was to provide training, in the form of apprenticeships for young people affected by autism. The apprenticeships were based in either the main gallery, learning the retail side of the business or downstairs in the gallery workshops, (learning new creative skills).

art gallery

Gallery on the Corner, Edinburgh

Over the last five and a half years the gallery has performed well and has been very successful……having held numerous exhibitions and trained many young people through its apprenticeship scheme. Some fabulous artists have emerged with the help of the gallery and are going on to develop careers in the arts, whilst others have gone on to college or to do other jobs.

As patron to this gallery, it has been a real privilege to have been part of this (albeit from the side-lines). I have, as you know, been lucky enough to have been invited to show my work in this great gallery and have held two solo shows there ….. the second one being back in August this year. It’s been a great window for my work in Edinburgh and I really appreciate the opportunity.

So then, it was with great disappointment that I learnt a couple of weeks ago that the charity was closing ‘the gallery on the corner’. I really don’t know the reasons for this decision and don’t want to speculate here …..but it seems a great shame after it has done such good work and after all the hard work by the staff, volunteers and trainees over the years. There was a great sense of sadness yesterday evening. That said, the evening was one to celebrate the great work that the gallery has done since 2010 and there is talk of bringing some of the artists together again in the future to hold exhibitions in different venues. This would be great and would be a fitting way to celebrate the success of this unique gallery and project.

Art Gallery

Art from the gallery on the corner

My thanks to everyone at ‘the gallery on the corner’ for their hard work over the years and my very best wishes to you all in your future careers. Thanks finally to all of you who have visited and supported ‘the gallery on the corner’ …..I hope you enjoyed the experience.

Blog 250 staggering at times, but not quite out!

Wow, I can’t quite believe I’ve written 250 of these blogs …but well that’s what the records say. My first blog was posted on 3rd March 2009 and talked about the exhibition I’d just had at Great Glen House in Inverness. This is the headquarters of Scottish Natural Heritage and it was a very interesting place to exhibit my work. I have to say that it doesn’t seem like over five years since Nita and I hired a van and drove up to Inverness with the paintings.

Exhibition at Great Glen House, September 2009

Exhibition at Great Glen House, September 2009

A lot has happened since that show in 2009. The following summer saw me living and working as guest artist with the Künstlerbund in the city of Speyer in southern Germany. I worked there for four months and had a really enjoyable and exciting time, creating I think, 14 paintings and 3 pastel drawings. One of these drawings was the large 4.5 m x 1.5m drawing based on the vast great cathedral that dominates the centre of the city.

Just before leaving Scotland to travel to Speyer, I was asked to act as patron to “the gallery on the corner” in Edinburgh. This magnificent little gallery is run by Autism Initiative Scotland and works both as a professional gallery supporting artists affected by autism and other health issues, and as a place for young people affected by autism to learn new skills in retail gallery work and / or practical art …in the workshops attached to the gallery. It was a fantastic launch in April that year and since then; the gallery has gone from strength to strength. Many trainees have completed their apprenticeships and are producing some excellent work. I’ve been privileged to be part of this project and try and visit several times each year to follow the progress of the gallery ….and indeed to exhibit some of my own work there. In 2013 I was invited to hold an exhibition there and it was during the preview for this show that I first met Dan Thornton ….the Seattle based landscape photographer and documentary maker

Talking at the gallery that night, Dan and I quickly realised that although we worked in very different ways, we both thought very similarly about the landscape. Before the evening ended, Dan and his colleague David Feeney asked if they could join Anita and me on our next walk into the hills.

Exhibition at Great Glen House, September 2009

Exhibition at Great Glen House, September 2009

As it happened, the next walk we’d planned was to go back to Glen Rosa on the Isle of Arran. Just a couple of months earlier we had been walking in this magnificent glen with our friend Guy. It had been a very cold day with snow on the higher slopes of the hills and large patches right down to river level at the head of the glen. As I walked up the glen that day I first started to think about doing another Speyer sized drawing. Where as that drawing had been based on the idea of walking around the cathedral, I thought I could do another based on walking through Glen Rosa. When Dan and David joined us for this second walk in the glen….. I started to tell them about my plans for the drawing.

As you know, my plans came to fruition and just a few months ago I created this new large 4.5m x 1.5m drawing. After the walk that day, Dan had asked if I’d be interested in him making a full hour long documentary about my work and its close connection to the Scottish landscape. He was particularly interested in focusing it on the big Glen Rosa drawing project. Since the walk in 2013, Dan has made a number of visits to Scotland and has taken many hours of footage for the documentary. As I write we are now at the stage of seeking sponsorship to cover the costs of editing and producing the film. It’s all come along way since our meeting at “the gallery on the corner” in Edinburgh.

Of course, much else has happened since my first blog. I’ve had plenty of exhibitions and have walked many Scottish hills and glens in this time. It’s been a very exciting period of my life and this last six months with the trip to Brazil and the subsequent commissions has continued in a similar way. And it’s still going on.

Just last week, my colleague Alex Boyd, told me that he had been speaking with the people at the Isle of Arran Distillery and had told them about my work and the big glen Rosa drawing. They’ve been in contact with me and have asked me if I could hold an exhibition in their exhibition space during September and October. They are particularly keen to show the large Glen Rosa piece and have a perfect 5m long wall for it. I’m really delighted with this opportunity as I’m very interested in seeing the big drawing touring around Ayrshire…..and in particular going to the Isle of Arran. The distillery really is the perfect place for it as it is located beneath the very mountains on which the drawing is based. A very big thanks to Alex for opening up this opportunity for me.

So then, there’s lots of work to do to get ready for the three exhibitions that I have lined up this summer. First though, is to get 3 large pieces ready for the “Ailsa Gallery” who will be taking the work to the Glasgow Art Fair at the end of April. After that, I have my exhibition at the John Muir Trust “Wild Space” in Pitlochry during May and June and then quickly followed in August with an exhibition at “the gallery on the corner” in Edinburgh again.

Exhibition at Great Glen House, September 2009

Exhibition at Great Glen House, September 2009

Right then, that’s the end of blog 250. Here’s hoping that there will be many more things to write about over the next five or so years as I creep my way towards Blog 500!

 

Link to Press Releases and Information created over the last few years.