Balloons

I think I just about managed to keep my frantic painting under wraps and have finally handed over my latest piece; a painted polaroid present for the newly wed Mr and Mrs Thompson.

'Balloons' 2012

Oil on primed paper

3.5 x 4.25 inches

Surprisingly, this is the first time I've framed a piece of my work properly. I took some tips from the paintings that are on display in Nottingham Trent University, and chose a simple box frame with a hessian printed mount backing.

Framed by Cotswold Framing, Cheltenham.

(Please ignore the reflections!)

Now that's done, I have a commission for three more Polaroid Paintings to be getting on with. If I'm being realistic, what with work and general life goings on, I think this will take me right up until the end of the year. So, maybe it will have to be 2013 before I properly get the chance to do my own thing, perhaps something a little different..?



Tarpey Gallery

A bit slow on the update on this one, but I'm involved in the opening of Tarpey Gallery's online shop and have four paintings for sale. There are currently two on the website and the others are available to view on request, or in the gallery itself.

You can visit the shop HERE.

Or you can visit the gallery here:
77 High Street, Castle Donington, DE74 2PQ.

Paintings up at NTU

My four paintings commissioned for Nottingham Trent's University Collection are now up in The School of Art and Design's Bonington Building.

Picture: Courtesy of Alice Thickett

Proof of Painting

Finally getting back into the routine.. With a little help from the bank holiday weekend, and a trip to see Lucian Freud: Portraits at the NPG.

Snap Back

So, Christmas has well and truly been and gone.. and it's March tomorrow. How has that happened?!

Back to reality: I seriously have to snap back into my painting routine - as of NOW.

On another note, after much avoidance, I've fallen in love with the instagram application on the iPhone (not that I own one). A few photos in, and I felt the urge to paint what I'd taken. We'll see what happens, though trust me, I won't be painting any self portraits any time soon!...

New Year, New Painting.

It may have taken me a ridiculously long time to do this (no thanks to those fiddly petals!). But here it is, at last...

Flowers (Pink), 2012
Oil on Primed Paper
3.5 x 4.25 inches

The Newton Arkwright Commission 2010-11

English poet DH Lawrence attended Nottingham Trent University (then University College) in 1906-08. He received his teaching certificate following his study in the Arkwright building. In his novel The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence drew on his own memories of Arkwright for, character, Ursula Brangwen's first impressions of College.

For the Newton/Arkwright commission I've used Lawrence’s famous piece of fiction to create the following four paintings.

Extracts from Chapter 15; THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY
Term began. She went into town each day by train. The cloistered quiet of the college began to close around her.
She was not at first disappointed. The big college built of stone, standing in the quiet street, with a rim of grass and lime trees all so peaceful: she felt it remote, a magic land. Its architecture was foolish, she knew from her father. Still, it was different from that of all other buildings. Its rather pretty, plaything, Gothic form was almost a style, in the dirty industrial town...

...Still, it was lovely to pass along the corridor with one’s books in one’s hands, to push the swinging, glass-panelled door, and enter the big room where the first lecture would be given. The windows were large and lofty, the myriad brown students’ desks stood waiting, the great blackboard was smooth behind the rostrum.
Ursula sat beside her window, rather far back. Looking down, she saw the lime trees turning yellow, the tradesman’s boy passing silent down the still, autumn-sunny street...
...She listened, she scribbled her notes with joy, almost with ecstasy, never for a moment criticising what she heard. The lecturer was a mouth-piece, a priest. As he stood, black-gowned, on the rostrum, some strands of the whispering confusion of knowledge that filled the whole place seemed to be singled out and woven together by him, till they became a lecture...
...She soon made a college friend, a girl who had lived in Florence, a girl who wore a wonderful purple or figured scarf draped over a plain, dark dress. She was Dorothy Russell, daughter of a south-country advocate. Dorothy lived with a maiden aunt in Nottingham, and spent her spare moments slaving for the Women’s Social and Political Union. She was quiet and intense, with an ivory face and dark hair looped plain over her ears...
All work made 2010-11.