I have been trying to clamber atop the mountain of paperwork as I mentioned, my to do list however has gotten out of control and its looking like I may never paint again! On the other hand I have worked my ass off painting lately, so the balance must be addressed and to keep all those various plates as creative practitioner, gallery manager and writer keep spinning away. besides I am letting ideas boil away in the background.
Our artists talk at Wilderness, ( my exhibition at Core Gallery with Enver Gursev and Neil Kelly) with distinguished painter Graham Crowley , ooh , a couple of weeks ago now , was superb.
Graham was utterly brilliant. Erudite, enthusiastic and full of energy, throwing art history, critical theory, opinion, popular culture; morsels of delicious information at our hungry feet. Charming too is Mr Crowley, when I introduced him as my visiting professor at RCA who taught me how to paint, he demurred, ‘No Rosalind I told you about painting, not how to paint, you did that…’ Graham has seen me develop in the last 5 years as a painter and I think he is happy with the result of what he sees from what I could gather. Neil and Enver were equally bowled over and charmed. To have a critically constructive eye over our work is wonderfully motivating.
Graham also gave us an overview of his work, admittedly difficult for a man whose career as an artist spans over 40 years, ‘like trying to do a short overview of Proust’ he told us. Graham started at the beginning of his art school education and emergence into the artworld; the climate, the way people were taught, again: more political, cultural and social history thrown in. Talking about his processes of working and ideas behind the work was fascinating.
A very satisfying day!
On another note, we finally got a teeny bit of funding to do a project at Cor Blimey! A one day drawing workshop involving the community working with 3 external artists from local studios in Deptford. The wrangling and endless re-workings of our application was worth it! As although its not much funding, we have had a success in it and it motivates us to try to do more.
Plus we have launched our first Gallery open submission with 3 fantastic judges; Graham Crowley, Kate Jones and Matt Roberts launched on
http://coregallerydeptford.blogspot.com
Now, about that paperwork, I have 2 articles to write- one for AIR about the government cuts to the arts under the coalition government ( eek !) and another for Becky Hunter who is going to create an artist led space in the US. All again very exciting stuff!
