Ducks and Studios

I'm busy finishing paintings, not in my garden, but now in the attic room that I have made into my new studio.  I could not spend another winter working in the cold so I have set up a studio over a couple of weeks, painting walls and adding an extractor fan.  I'm now working as much as I can to get paintings finished for the Flex A&D Affordable Art&Design Fair at Islington Green on the 6th - 8th December 2013.  My work will be on the Ben Oakley Gallery stand and I will be there to help out.
The painting of a duck is inspired by a photo I found that was taken a long time ago by a friend.  It is part of a new set of paintings that I am making using images from my past. I have made a few small canvas and board duck paintings and will be adding the image as a detail on a larger canvas that I am busy spray painting.

Spray Paint on Canvas

I'm back to spray paint and stencils on canvas.  My first canvas since I finished the painted bottles for Far Rockaway.  This is only a detail as I'm starting a larger canvas and adding some other images.  I'm also making five small feather paintings in the same colourway to leave on the street as free street art.  

Shoreditch Window

The Farrockaway restaurant in Curtain Road, Shoreditch opened this weekend and my window display  is in place.  The bottles are stacked back to back so you can also see them from inside the bar.  It was the first time that I had seen them altogether as this is a really big window display and I don't have an equivalent space.  I am really pleased with the finished look.  

These two pictures show close-ups of the bottles in their new home.

Also inside you will find the skateboard and the two small tables that I painted.

Art at Far Rockaway

 The bottles I have been painting are all finished, packaged up and sent off to the Far Rockaway Restaurant in Curtain Road, Shoreditch London which is due to open shortly.

I'm looking forward to seeing them all together as I  did not have a space large enough to display them. I'm also looking forward to seeing the other great art that has been commissioned for the restaurant with artists like David Bray, Mark Powell, Wreckage International, Rugman, Snub, Guy Denning, Barry Bish, Ben Oakley and many more.  Far Rockaway is shaping up to be the art event of the year.

Mardy

Friday night was the private view for Rowan Newton and Carne Griffiths' joint show called "Mardy" at the Ben Oakley Gallery.  All the work features one model as their subject represented in their own individual style.

                           
  
The Gallery was overflowing with collectors, artists and friends of the Gallery who went on to socialise  until early morning.

A joint limited edition print featured a side by side portrait by each artist making it possible to have both  Carne and Rowan's work in one picture. For more information and image see the  Ben Oakley Gallery website Show runs until the 22nd September 2013.

                                     

Sparrow in the B.O.G.

While looking after the Ben Oakley Gallery a couple of Sundays ago I had time to make a very short movie of one of my sparrow paintings on the very distinctive gallery walls.

100 Bottles

This is one of a hundred bottles I am spray painting faces on for a window display in a soon to open London restaurant.  It is a really lovely project as the bottles are a mix of shapes, sizes and colours with different labels and tags on them.  Each time I open a new box I find another interesting bottle that I will want to cut a stencil for.  I will post more images and more information on the project as I get further into the work.

Leadenhall Angel Movie

While at Leadenhall Market I filmed a movie on my camera of Let an Angel Pass.  The light was really good and I was able to pick out the detail in the layers of spray paint.  I plan to make more films of my work.

Leadenhall Market 2013

The Elevated Art Fair at Leadenhall Market is half way through.  I have been so busy with work before the show that I had forgotten to post this painting I had made.

I have kept my display quite minimal with a feather theme of Sparrows, Pigeons and Angels. The show, in the centre of the Street-market, has been busy with camera crews, city gents, tourists and shoppers.  On Wednesday artist Ray Richardson spent the day quietly painting Staffordshire Bull-terriers on canvases. 

   

Elevated Art Fair 2013

I will be back in Leadenhall Market in the City of London at this years Elevated Art Fair with my spray painted pigeons, sparrows and angels.  You can see me and other Ben Oakley Gallery artists from Monday 8th July - 12th July.

Painted Skateboard

I was given a skateboard and asked to spray paint what I wanted onto it.  Of course I had to paint an angel but I was not sure how I was going to fit it into such a strange shape.  There are no wheels on the skateboard as the finished thing is going on a ceiling of a building with other skateboards painted by other artists.  I still have to paint in the detail and a few more feathers but I will post again when it is finished and on the ceiling.  

Michael Landy - 20 Years Of Pressing Hard

This week I went to the private view of Michael Landy - 20 Years of Pressing Hard a retrospective of his drawings from 1993 -2013 at the Thomas Dane Gallery.  The show is in two gallery spaces the first one I went in had a large framed line etching of a weed that he had drawn after his Break Down project in 2001 where he destroyed all his worldly possessions over three weeks in the old C&A building in Oxford Street.  The etching is of a weed that he found growing out of the pavement in the estate where he was living and is a celebration to survival against the odds.  It is so delicate and beautiful that when I took a picture on my phone it showed nothing of how it really looked.  So the only way to really view it is to go and see it.

There are drawings of a machine that Jean Tinguely made in 1960 in the MoMA that caught fire and failed in its performance. Landy became obsessed with this and made several drawings in bleach, correction fluid, oil-stick, charcoal, glue, wax and ink from photographs and film of the event. A row of his 'Portraits' selected from the eighty that he made are here too.
In the other space there is a remake of a black marker pen picture this time using oil-stick, that was just finished in time for the show, I really liked the texture and detail of this and the time span of making it.  A lot of his work is about things being destroyed and what comes next.  At the area of the gallery where they sell the books I asked a very knowledgeable assistant if there where any collections of the Nourishment weed etchings.  She said there had been but that was some time ago and that they had none there, so I will not know if they were as beautiful as the original.  I will just have to go back again to have another look.  

Shall We Let an Angel Pass

I started this painting some time ago and showed you a glimpse of it as it was a move away from using blues as a main colour palette.  That was some time ago and since then I have had many thoughts on how it was going to evolve with a lot of time just looking at the canvas and a lot of time waiting for the weather to improve so I could get outdoors and paint.  I have put detail in then taken it out, I have looked at it again and changed the shading.  I watched a movie that I had seen many years ago by Roman Polanski - The Fearless Vampire Killers - as I remembered it being so beautifully filmed and styled.  I have even taken my title from that movie as that part of the script had always stayed with me.  It was going to be a figurative painting but I spray painted it out to a portrait.  Then after painting some final detail in I went out on an errand and lost my spectacles. I have an old pair of spectacles I can wear for now although the lenses are not as clear.  The painting is finished and I have started a couple of new pieces that I will post about soon.

     

Painting on a Stratocaster

Painting on a Stratocaster copy was my new project.  The painted guitar is going to be hanging in a London restaurant with a selection of others painted by different artists. The metalwork, bridge, pick-ups and the curve of the main bodywork did not leave a lot of space for my image however  I am pleased with how it has fitted in and helped form the layout of the angel.

 

Tiny Angels

Three tiny angels spray painted on 20cm x 20cm board with one already on it's way over to America.  So I'm already planning to paint some more and have cut some smaller stencils that I will test out. I'm planning on working with some different colours and details. These will have to wait for a bit as I have just been given a new graffiti project to do.

When the sun comes out

 Small detail from a picture that is beginning to look like a form of an Angel painting. The cold weather this winter  has slowed down my work on this picture. When the sun comes out over the next week I will be able to get more layers of spray paint on and get them dry before I paint in the detail.  

Whizzing Along

We are half way into March and this year is really whizzing along.  There are still some traces left of the Kevin Threesaunds show at the Ben Oakley Gallery.  Dartboard, drinks tables, printed walls and bar were the setting for paintings by Ray Richardson, David Bray and Ben Oakley.

 


New work is planned and on its way while other paintings are now on show including my spray painted Guardian Angel that sits next to a couple of Pam Glew bleached fabric pictures, whose work I really like.  In a couple of weeks time all will change again as we whiz into April.

Snow on the Way

Snow is on the way, so it's time I put some snowy feather paintings out as free art in the streets of London.  When I was in the Ben Oakley Gallery last week Rowan Newton reckoned that there will be three weeks worth of snow.

   

I had forgotten about this photo I had taken of a very large painting Rowan made for the Urban Barrier show back in December.

I had also taken this photo that has him talking to what appears to be a butterfly boy.

Happy 2013

A Happy New Year to all my readers and I hope that 2013 will be a good year.