Whitespace Exhibition

My recent exhibition at the Whitespace Gallery was a show involving myself and Roz McKenzie. The work was a mixture of drawings, painting and contemporary stained glass. To see more of Roz's work click on the link above.. 

Roz's stained glass panels were in lightboxes which we built ourselves and hung on a particular wall of the gallery to get the right level of light (direct light from strip lights on the panels would have ruined the effect).

                                     

My work mostly involved drawings but included the watercolours and oil painting hung on this particular wall. The big painting is titled 'Arsenic Mine' and is based on drawings and photographs I took in Cornwall of abandoned arsenic mines which ran down to the cliff edges. I have previous posts on this blog and my other website. The watercolours were looking at 10 Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament. I was interested in the odd way in which these places represented the heart of our 'democracy' while at the same time looking like a cage. I found the image of tourists staring at fairly mundane scenes through bars at the police officers within like some sort of bizarre zoo. 

More hanging Roz's stained glass panels.

These small drawings took up the last wall of the gallery, they were all drawings I have done in-situ. They are mostly from the various places I have been in the previous year - Wells, Erfurt and paderborn. These drawings represent a sort of travelogue of my travels.

Downing Street/Parliament watercolours with reflections.

Munch-esque

A work in progress I started in Wells, Somerset. Someone commented that it looked like a Munch painting, this happened quite by accident as I was painting this completely free hand with no particular thoughts as to style rather simply the composition of figure in foreground leading to the stand of trees above.

Roz

'Roz' (1/12/2008) Dimensions 10 x 15 cm. Oil and varnish on board.

A painting I did of me lovely girlfriend, Roz! I wanted to get as much detail into the clothing as possible particularly the pattern the knitting makes on the green jumper. It brings me great pleasure to spend endless hours painting dots onto things.. this little painting let me practice layering skin tones which I have wanted to do for some time. I admit it isn't as good as I wanted it to be! In the end I felt I didn't really need to layer skin tones, i preferred the skin tones I created in the past using flat colour.