after the hustle bustle of the art trail weekend, it was a welcome break to travel to salthouse to install my piece for the salthouse art exhibition.... having only ventured to salthouse a couple of times before, i am beginning to wonder if it is perpetually shrouded in an ethereal mist... as we travelled northwards, about ten miles from our destination, a mist appeared, and, unlike the mist of winter which descends slowly, silently and is usually quite still, this mist arrived in waves, moving in smoke-like drifts across the fields...
[saltscapes i - xxv] 100cm x 100cm, gesso and mixed media on wood panel, installed for the exhibition salthouse 09...the mist scarcely dispersed along the winding coastal road, and became even denser as we neared salthouse village... later, taking a short walk across the salt marshes to the sea, from the vantage point of the high shingle bank, all evidence of salthouse the village was erased by the silvery greyness, and looking north, east and west the mist quietly enveloped, obliterating the sea horizon, a sense of direction briefly lost but a strange sense of immensity gained, a vaporous cocoon of immeasurable calm...
[salthouse beach, june 2009]a tranquil gaze, discovered in the humblest of eyes, are the artisans of immensity (the poetics of space, gaston bachelard)
the company of artists [part one]
it's been a heady few days of artists' exhibitions, previews and soirees.. times to flaunt with the art and flatter the artists, the opportunity to make new connections, and just very occasionally putting one's foot in it with foolish assumptions and then having to withdraw graciously to the buffet.... places where wine and words flow... talking of nuances of surface, resonance, veils of colour, vibrations, gradations, from visual clarity to the erased and obscured, from outside to inside, of noise and silence, expansiveness and containment... i am all talked out...
along with the recent work i have set up in the barn for the art trail i also put on show my piece for salthouse 09. which i finally assembled in situ, neatly spacing the verticals, then later coming back to where the journey started, to the horizon... a friend said it appeared calmer that way...
[saltscapes 2009]mixed media on wood panel; shown here in previous vertical formation...
life on mars [a red painting]
[edgescape rost...]newly installed for the taster art exhibition HWAT 09 (opens 20 June 2009) at the Harleston Gallery in Norfolk... fellow artists Jane German and David Page hung the diverse range of work beautifully in the five gallery spaces... here, to the left and right of the fireplace are gesso panels by Dinny Turner, and on the right wall some driftwood sculptures and paintings by HWAT guest artist Derek Nice... and a nice leather sofa too (no relation)...
[edgescape : rost; 95cm x 95cm including frame, gesso and mixed media on canvas]...i was inspired to take another mission to mars (courtesy of NASA)...a robotic lander, The Phoenix [as part of the current exploratory Mars Phoenix Mission], has been looking for more evidence of life on mars in the planet's mineral-rich but arid soils... evidence of salt deposits suggests that there was once water and thus life on mars... i have been enjoying viewing the nasa images of this martian, desert-like environment, composed of expansive volcanic craters, craggy rocks, dry valleys and delta basins... it's a bit frosty there too, not at all warm as one might assume.. the relative redness is attributed to the red iron oxides present in the soil, and many images of the surface of mars are digitally enhanced with false-color... the potential origins of life are there to see on nasa...so, why on earth do some people twitter on about eating cake (as nice as the cake may be) or whether or not to mow the lawn...?nasa inspired me to do a miniature surveillance of the surface of my painting edgescape: rost...
[detail 1 of edgescape : rost]
[detail 2 of edgescape : rost]
[detail 3 of edgescape : rost]
[detail 4 of edgescape : rost]rost meaning a strong current or tide, the Germanic origin of rust, meaning red, rost is also a small crater on the surface of the Moon... Mars, known as the red planet, is not truly red... mars red, the whole of life painted in red... fire and fury, power, glory, blood and guts, of war and peace... the blush of ripening fruit, the rush of life, energy, passion, belief, resoluteness, and enlightenment...edgecape: rost ii is on exhibition at the HWAT taster exhibition (opens this weekend)... and there's a second taster to follow at the cork brick gallery (small-scale artworks)...view my other paintings in the edgescapes series..