The Barn
My live/work space
A live/work space on the outskirts of Brighton.
It’s been almost a year since I moved into a converted medieval barn near Shoreham-By-Sea. It’s a lovely space to rent and a great inspiration to paint in - excellent natural, flat light and incredibly peaceful. A real find. Whilst it doesn't’t have the buzz of Brighton and Hove, it has a sense of solitude and quiet purpose. I even have my own plaque outside!
The tiny community of Kingston Buci where the barn sits within, has a 11th C church, St Julians, next door and I overlook not one but two graveyards! I guess that’s what I mean about it being quiet!
Work in Progress
Some other work on the spin.
A few of pieces of ‘work in progress’ to show you that are presently on easels in my studio space. Whilst I’m still working on the larger portraits from the ‘Carte Vista’ theme, these can be found here.
In ‘Psychobabble’ above, I’m now upping the scale of my smaller ‘Psycho’ pieces I did a couple of years ago into 2 metres (plus) canvases. They’ll explore filmic narratives mixed in with cultural iconography and ideas around framing and suspended animation and the notion of life as one, big conveyor belt (see some of my earlier Cambodia work in Painting).
Above is a small oil study of my Goddaughter, Arwen. It’s had one ‘pass’ so it needs a lot of work. I’m attempting to play around with a different, less restricted colour palette in anticipation of upcoming commissions. So it acts as a good test piece.
This charcoal drawing, Dog Day Afternoon, has been hanging around for ages. I haven’t even ‘fixed’ it yet! But it’s now up on an easel (again) and I’m determined to finish it!
(Not-so) Hot off the press
A Letter-press session in Brighton.
What seems like a lifetime ago, 2018, I did a short 5-hour letterpress course with Mister Magpie in his wonderful shop in the North Laine in Brighton.
The aim was to retrospectively illustrate a wedding poem I’d written for a couple of friends in 2013 (see below), ‘The Wondrous Tale of the Cat and the Fox’. And if you’ve ever done letterpress before, you’ll know that it involves a lot of prep, is highly technical and one mistake is a big mistake!
And, of course, I made not one, but two mistakes - misspelling Wondrous. Twice! And whilst one can get away with the more archaic spelling - Wonderous with an E - you most certainly can’t get away with Wonderdous! A lesson to learn - make sure you know exactly what you’re laying out before you ink things up! Because there’s no turning back!
One thing the session did was reinforce my admiration for the printer's skills in the ‘hot metal’ days when entire newspapers were set (backwards) in lightning-quick time. Insane when you think about it.
It also made me smile when Mr Magpie helped me set the ‘leading’ and ‘padding’ with bits of metal and Allen keys. I’m old (and fortunate) enough to remember Pica scales and letter pressing from my early college days but it’s a reminder of the provenance of the words and techniques we take for granted on our computers today and the skill and graft it required back then. My hat is well and truly doffed.
