WIP

and the snow keeps dropping

kiwi fruit

Remember the first time I came across Kiwi fruit. It would have been about 1984 and it it was one of the first times I went to the big supermarket on my own. It was the Safeways in Strood, Kent, and I would've caught the bus from our house in Wainscott 10 minutes away- maybe on the way to the Pentagon shopping centre in Chatham. My memory tells me they were more prickly then than they are now and they looked weird, but we didn't have them at home and I thought I would buy some with my pocket money. I wonder when we started selling them in the UK?

'Strange fruit' - acrylic on canvas

phillip allen paintings

http://www.theapproach.co.uk/artists/phillip-allen/1

Nice stuff

'strange fruit' still lifes

Fiona Rae - early work

http://www.timothytaylorgallery.com/artists/work/fiona-rae/untitled-six-on-grey-and-brown/

work in progress - still life concept

winter exhibition - until 2011

Jump on the bike (snow tyres on- check!) and check out paintings up at Markfield Park Cafe called Pistacios in the Park. Its right by River Lea and a short distance to the Marshes.
http://www.pistachiosinthepark.org.uk/
It has wifi too.

Pistacios in the park....

It is all very well having a studio space, the tricky part is working out what to paint. Have an idea ready before your journey ends at the studio doors –you need to work out what you will do with your precious spare time. Is it worth it? Painting has been done to death. So you can prep the boards and make plenty of canvas stretchers, a universe of possibility waits in the form of the white gessoed surface. But I do plan out what I aim to paint. Not so much common objects. Even though figures and objects are not things to dismiss, they may appear anytime. Just flat layers, I tell myself. Choose a colour. Oil, acrylic or perhaps another medium? See what happens to the surface when it has been applied. A simple command or thought begs more questions than answers. Art shops sell a variety of different size brushes not to mention everything else. Explore what happens when you build up the surface or add another colour. Masking-tape is great and I use this alot too. Take it off and glimpse at the surface below. Photos are great and I wish I could paint everything I photographed. Drawing helps me in any of its forms. I have them around but they run parallel to the painting as visual prompts. The activity and time spent in my studio is great and compelling – when I am on a roll, I am opening new pathways in the work through a process of invention. However simplicity is often the most desirable option. A complex composition. Paintings often don’t work out for whatever reason. Then in a cull, I may cut up the cast aside painting, pull off the canvas I stuck on a wooden board, the new shape or reverse side renews my interest and I go again. When to stop painting? That is the tricky part when the brief can be so open-ended. So I build up relationships with the works, I have invested time, the paintings suggest and hint, intertwined painted layers of colour and texture.

ideas for a statement.. Long verson!

Long verson (my drink is too hot!)

Thank-you for checking out my paintings. I am interested in colour surface, texture and bold confident abstract paintings and doing things the wrong way. I apply paint when I shouldn't, I should stop and look first. So then I take it off and a trace of something stays. I have alot of great ideas in my paintings and sometimes the feeling is like I have just re-invented the wheel. This gives me something to think about and the trace is a springboard that gives me momentum to do something else next until I mess it up again and the work stays in the corner sulking. I use bits and things from other paintings that were just failures in a spirit of 'free-cycling' I attach this, or glue that, on to the surface. It looks good for a while, then the feeling fades so I paint a layer over it. It feels right again- so Ishould leave it there. Mr Dealer take it away now please. The wobbly rough bits on the surface hint and wink, I will put a clashing colour over that odd shape and it might become an abstract form which pretends to be something it is not. Sometimes I do stuff and I tell myself I don't care because I will get some kind of result and hey presto lets work with that. Quite often I don't give myself enough detail how to carry out something I have told myself to do. Often I say it doesen't matter because it is easy to make abstract expressionist paintings because that is what I am about- it is my safety default net - that is what everyone likes to look at even if its been caned to death over the past 50 years. How easy is it to do one of those paintings?

I listen to the radio with all the people talking about the days events or I have my MP3 player on flicking between favourite albums and often playing the same old tracks until I have to wipe the whole playlists and make a new one that will open some new doors. It gives me the spark, along with the sugar and caffeine rushes. The football game gives me a line I like, I scribble it down and it may be a good title for a painting one day. I don't really want to paint forms that people know, instead I want to put down colours and switch them about but not in a textbook way. I like to scrape back, chip away, peel it off, get back to where i once belonged, why did I move it on? Occasionally something recognisable stays that has personal significance but not often. Once and many more times paintings get cut, why did I make so many the same size - I hate the square! They go on their merry ways then they get to sit together after a while. They have a chat, and get on better than before- pre-nuptuals are made and so I am the vicar in this new reunion- I join them up again. They are not big and they are not clever, but I hope you enjoy them nevertheless

Albert Oehlen

Established artist yes, but I still enjoy looking at Albert Oehlen's abstract works, they look so accomplished and some as if they were knocked off one inspired afternoon.

http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/albert-oehlen/

spider in the turpentine

A massive spider in the dried away turpentine tub. The critter probably had a bit of a headache after wondering inside to escape the cold.

21.10.10

v interesting- article on Richard Tuttle's work

http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/articles/record.html?record=568

Frieze

After meaning to go in previous years before, finally, I have attended. Now I never need to go again to this crazy circus.

however i did jot down the following:

Adrian Ghenie - really pleased to see a painting of his there, supreme paint handler, I could look at his work for hours.

Lesley Vance

http://www.davidkordanskygallery.com/?n=artists&aid=18

Richard Tuttle

http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/128

Hans Lanner

http://thebesttimeoftheday.blogspot.com/2010/08/hans-lanner.html

Susanne Paesler

http://www.friezeartfair.com/yearbook/artist/100043577

Tomory Dodge

http://www.crggallery.com/artists/tomory-dodge/work/?photo=1

Tom LaDuke and The beholder's share at Mummery and Schnelle

One of the artists at the current painting exhibition at Mummery and Schnelle is Tom LaDuke, whose work caught my eye. Also enjoyed Julie Roberts piece, combining subject matter with technique.

www.mummeryschnelle.com

http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2010/01/tom-laduke-exposing-handmade-deceptions.html

finished work presented at open studios last weekend

July was a busy month here..!

Everyday is a painting day mantra etc..

don't know if i can beat 25 posts in a month

where its at....

check this out

http://www.howardsherman.com/home.htm

Open studios North London

Our open studios kicks off in two hours and is on till sunday. Come along and check out the work of 37 artists at Euroart studios based in Tottenham in North London

Euroart Open studios

Units 5 & 6

Gaunson House

Markfield Road

Tottenham N154QQ

Oct 1-3rd

Friday 6-10pm

Sat 2-6pm

sun 2-6pm

Free parking, 7 mins from seven sisters tube.

My studio is no. 29 - hope you can make it!

continued

Boy with a balloon

Man with rubbish bags

Man looks at a menu and a figure ironing

continued

new paintings for the open studios

Nick Powell - artist statement

October 2010

In my new work started this past month I have been keen to explore the relationship that drawing has with painting, in terms of representing the figure. In wishing to retain the immediacy of the drawings I made, I projected and drew figurative images onto the canvas.

I drew people walking down a street in a relaxed setting. However, the original drawings of the figures were executed without any reference to buildings or backgrounds. I was just interested in recording physical detail. The drawings took five-to-ten seconds, or the time it took for the person or people to walk in and out of view. I had no time to consider my work or to edit the drawing during this time. If they stopped walking I had more time to draw them. The drawings were a result of observing and responding to their movement, with my pencil marks recording sensations according to their gait or gesture.

The challenge was to situate them in a perspective. By using acrylic paint and through the use of colour and layering I was keen to explore how the figure could relate to a new invented space on the canvas.