counter hit xanga
Brazil | Scottish Landscape Art - Scottish Landscape Paintings

Posts Tagged ‘Brazil’

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.

Back in Scotland…..and painting again…..take 2!

I actually wrote this blog yesterday evening but after 3 hours my computer crashed and I somehow lost the whole document! So here we go again.

Well then, that’s us back in sunny Scotland and back to business as usual at the studio. We arrived back from Brazil after a very long journey, at about 01.00 last Thursday morning. Wow, quite a trip, especially as only about two weeks before I been bumbling along getting work ready for the Harbour Arts Centre show in November and planning the big studio tidy-up before the Courtyard Studios Open Weekend on 4th / 5th October.

On the initial tour of the Matarazzo Hospital exhibition

On the initial tour of the Matarazzo Hospital exhibition

Then, right out of the blue I get an email from a company in Brazil asking if I can get down to Sao Paulo for a few days before October 12th. To be honest, I didn’t really know quite what to make of it as sadly there are a lot of internet scams aimed at artists these days. I decided to send it to John who not only does all the admin for this website but also acts as my agent and advisor. He very kindly checked it out and got back to me the next day saying that all was OK and that if I was prepared to rush down to Sao Paulo at short notice, he’d try and fix everything with the people in Brazil.

Sketching the old buildings

Sketching the old buildings

Well, it was a hectic few days with emails winging there way back and forth between John, (who is based in Bogota), Lucila (the lady organising the trip in Sao Paulo) and I. Finally on Tuesday 7th we got the email from Brazil saying all was “go” and that they’d be booking the flights and hotel and getting back to us. Things in the Salmon / Groves house were somewhat crazy at this stage as we suddenly had to get everything arranged to go away the following evening ….Nita had to arrange time off from work, we had to get the cat to the cattery, (he wasn’t amused) and we also had to get everything packed. In the end the flight left Edinburgh at 06.00 Thursday morning and so it wasn’t quite as mad a rush as we’d thought ….but pretty mad all the same!

In the Matarazzo Hospital

In the Matarazzo Hospital

I had been invited to travel to Sao Paulo to take part in a large arts project in the city. The project involves creating a new art, culture and tourism centre on the site of the old un-used Matarazzo hospital. Before the work starts though it had been decided that they would hold a large contemporary art exhibition in the grounds and buildings of this fine old hospital. The exhibition ended on Sunday 12th October and one of the sponsors thought it would be a great idea to invite a professional artist who was visually impaired to visit the exhibition and to then create a small series of paintings capturing the spirit of the place and work. I was the lucky person to be invited.

A quick hop took us to Amsterdam and then we had the eleven and a half hour haul down to Sao Paulo. Phew, was I glad to get off that plane or what?! Thankfully we were met by a very nice chap called Gilsom who drove us the 45 minutes into the city and our hotel.

Friday proved a very busy one as we met up with a representative of the company sponsoring my trip (Absolut Elyx) and were then given a guided tour around the exhibition…..being followed the whole way by a small film crew who were there to record the meeting for the company. The afternoon found me being interviewed for one of the Sao Paulo daily newspapers. After that I was able to get down to some work and expertly guided as usual by Nita, I spent the rest of Friday and a good chunk of Saturday and Monday wandering around the exhibition, just looking, photographing, sketching and just taking everything in ….in short, doing exactly what I do when we’re in the hills. After 4 hours in very hot conditions on Monday (it was 38° C) I decided that I’d probably got enough to work with and we retreated to the cool of our very posh air conditioned hotel ….and finished with a cold beer!

One of the many exhibits

One of the many exhibits

We flew back the following day, but with a nine hour wait in Paris for the connecting flight to Edinburgh ….hence the 01.00 arrival home in Irvine on Thursday morning. Suffice to say that we were a little whacked by the time we finally put our heads down and only surfaced mid morning for an hour or so in order to go claim our cat back from the cattery…….he wasn’t amused!

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been all the way to Brazil and back ….perhaps it was just a dream? But no! We have the packet of Brazil nuts from the hotel mini-bar to prove it! Now the interesting bit begins…..I have five paintings to complete by late February.

I have my attention back on the Harbour Arts Centre exhibition and the big drawing project there in November / December, but reckon I’ll probably do the smaller Brazil paintings in the evenings after I’ve finished the days work on the big graphite drawing. I’ll then be able to do the final larger painting once the HAC show is over at the end of the first week in January. The finished Brazil paintings are to be shipped back to Sao Paulo and then put in a gallery and auctioned to raise funds for the on-going project. I’ll keep you updated on all this work … doubt that I’ll be spending much time at home over the next few months. Watch this space.

A few days in Brazil

Twelve days ago I was bumbling along, starting to get in a bit of a panic about preparations for our Open Weekend. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from Lucila Longi, an employee of a Brazilian PR company, working in Sao Paulo. She explained that a client of theirs was involved in a large arts project in the city and they were keen to know if I could travel to Sao Paulo for a few days to take part in the project.

One of the large sculptures in the Sao Paulo exhibition

One of the large sculptures in the Sao Paulo exhibition: ‘Made by Brazilians’

As you can imagine, this was somewhat of a surprise and I passed it on to my agent, John and asked him to find out more about the project. There were a number of quite frantic days of negotiation before finally, on Tuesday we got the go ahead.

The project is based in an old, large and disused hospital building close to the centre of Sao Paulo. The building is shortly to be converted into an Arts and Cultural Centre, but before the work starts, the sponsors have organised a huge exhibition there, consisting of a hundred Brazilian and international artists.

Entrance to the old hospital at Cidade Matarazzo, Sao Paulo

Entrance to the old hospital at Cidade Matarazzo, Sao Paulo

I have been invited to spend a few days visiting and recording the building and exhibition prior to the new development. On my return to Scotland, I have been asked to create several paintings that capture the spirit of the building and this remarkable exhibition.

This all happened very rapidly and with the exhibition closing today, they needed to get me down to Brazil straight away. The sponsors very kindly agreed to pay for both myself and Anita to travel to and stay in Brazil, as they appreciated I would need a guide.

Suffice to say, it’s been a remarkable few days. The exhibition is really excellent and the old hospital building is a great venue. With the exhibition now over, the curator is meeting us tomorrow, so that we can spend a final day taking more photos, videos and for me to do some further drawings. We’re flying back on Tuesday evening and will arrive in Scotland somewhat crumpled, no doubt, around 24 hours after leaving Sao Paulo. Phew! Quite a week! More about this later.

Photographing part of the exhibition 'Made by Brazilians' at Cidade Matarazzo

Photographing part of the exhibition ‘Made by Brazilians’ at Cidade Matarazzo

-o-o-o-o-o-o-