Spirit in a bottle

I have started a new project which came from an older project.  Last year I made a piece of work 'spirit in a bottle' that was a champagne advert with a superimposed angel face.  The new project is a collection of empty champagne bottles that I have added images to and I am thinking of putting them out as free art.

 

Waiting

I have added more gold leaf to the hands of The Blue Angel and the edges have been tidied so I just need to get it framed. I have cut stencils for some new work and painted a background for another project that I am working on.  As I do all my spray painting in my garden and have no covered area I am waiting for the rain to stop.  I think the rain is here for the day looking at the forecast they say it's going to rain all week.  I have some free art Angel Feathers to finish so I can put them out this week but I really want to be painting or start construction on a roof at the end of the garden.

 

David Bray

David Bray has a one man show on at the Ben Oakley Gallery Greenwich of new work entitled Far Out is Not Far Enough.  I went along to the private view on Thursday night.

  
The gallery was packed with people including the artist himself who was surrounded for most the night with people wanting to chat to him.  And so they should, his work is detailed and beautifully drawn with some unexpected quirks hidden among the doe eyed girls and woodland creatures.

After a while of being there I was  handed a small white paper bag that had a funny little red drawing on it of a character that is in a few of his drawings, inside the bag was a liquorice pipe.  Some of the work is on card, paper, blackboard, metal and ends of old book covers that have been removed from the book.

I loved all the work and will be making a trip back to the gallery for another look and to collect the print I bought.

 

the show is on until the 29th April 2012.

Damien Hirst Tate Modern 2012

On Tuesday I went along to the members preview of the much publicised Damien Hirst show at the Tate Modern.  I took my daughter along with the promise of going shopping afterwards.  The Tate building was impressive as usual.  The show is on the third floor and as it was relatively early no one was queuing at the entrance barriers, which was a blessing.  The first room is surprisingly small and at the time four technicians were attempting to fix a non-working hairdryer that would normally suspend a ping-pong ball in the airstream above it.  The work in this room is his earliest and I imagine it was made in his student studio/space.  My favourite in that room was his large painting of random blobs of paint in bright colours and 8 pans, which I would have liked more if there was a stick to bang them with.

One then goes through into a larger space, in which the noticeable difference in the work is as massive as the room.  Spot paintings line the walls, starting to be more regimented and painted with perfect precision then previously.  Beautifully made cabinets of silver and glass filled with lines of tiny pills, large metal and glass tanks holding sharks, cattle and even office furniture.  In one display, a severed cow's head is rotting and a micro world of flies can be observed.  In another space huge Butterflies hatch from their pupae and fly freely amongst the visitors, living on strategically placed plants and bowls of fruit. (Security staff check the visitors on leaving this room that they are not carrying stowaways unawares).  Then an installation of more medicine cabinets that look as if they are part of a very expensive pharmacy, only without the white coated and immaculately groomed staff; an insect-o-cutor suspended above as a symbol of death. The show grows into a room of opulence; gold display cases filled with rows of diamond cut crystals sparkling in a gold wallpapered room with a small encased shark, the show finishes in a room of quieter but still beautiful religious themed pieces.


The thing that became clear to me was the money - the money that Damien Hirst had required to fuel his imagination and to build his very expensive works of art.  The work in the first room had hinted at ideas but then he had to start making work to fit galleries like Saatchi's on Boundary Road, London  that he visited declaring  'And that's when I realised we wouldn't fit into the art world the way it was.'

We eventually left via the gift shop and planned to see For the Love of God, his life-size platinum cast of a human skull, set with 8,601 diamonds in the Turbine Hall.  It was closed as there was a problem that the technicians were trying to fix.  So we left the gallery and headed across town to another impressive building and wondered among the expensive metal and glass display cabinets of bejewelled fashion and displays of chocolate sculptured bunnies and sugar eggs.....
      

More Free Feathers

My new set of free art is finished and going out into the streets.  I intend to keep this as an on going project as they are fun to make and I can experiment with different looks.  I left one near Bank station yesterday while rushing to catch a train.  I like to think that someone has taken it home with them this weekend and has placed it on a shelf or mantelpiece to enjoy.     

The Blue Angel

I'm getting near to finishing this large painting I started sometime ago.  It is a lot darker in real life  than it looks on the screen as the camera has picked up some darker shades and lightened them.  I'm already thinking of painting a lighter version on a smaller canvas. 

Small Paintings

While working on a large canvas I stopped to make three other small paintings, each from a small stencil of a feather, with details painted onto linen box canvas measuring 10cm square each.  The large painting is taking some time as it keeps changing and evolving into something different.  The idea I had for it many weeks ago has gradually been lost under layers of paint on canvas.