City and Guilds of London Art School

The show is now installed. My paintings are hung in a ‘room’ in one of the large, light-filled studios near the main entrance of the School. The etchings are in a mixed display, in a gallery of four studios in the terraced houses.

What once seemed an endless list of things to do to prepare has almost been completed. The postcards and catalogues arrived earlier this week and have come out very well, thanks to a visit with Emma to the very helpful printers at Giraffe. Now there is only assessment, the graduation ceremony, and the show itself. We open next Wednesday.

I’m glad of a few days off now before the hectic schedule of next week begins. After five full days, with four evening events, and all this at the end of a busy few months, I’m looking forward to a holiday!

If you’re in London, come and visit. Details of the show are here: http://www.cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk/news/schoo…

This blog has been rather neglected, as my time has been so much taken up with show preparation. I now have three large paintings ready to show, and three etchings at the framers.

Last week we packed up our studios, and work is already underway to convert the studios to exhibition spaces. Walls are being built, holes filled and painted. The Foundation show has just closed, and the School has been a busy place with work being moved around and construction going on in many rooms. In one studio Gala has been building stretchers for her paintings which were executed on canvas tacked to the wall. But most people have finished their work, and she is surrounded by their pieces, wrapped and stacked against the walls.

Much of the last week has been spent on designing the catalogue, which will be a postcard book. The bulk of the work – gathering images and information, deciding on a layout, designing the covers – didn’t take that long. But proofing on screen and catching the mistakes took so much longer, and I think Emma and I were both pretty tired when we reached the end yesterday.

The catalogue has been funded by sponsorship, but selling home-made cake provided a large chunk of the funds, somewhat to our collective surprise.

Work continues on the show spaces next week, with the hang commencing the week after. There’s still plenty to do, but it’s going well so far.

I’ve had three large paintings on the go for a little while now. The good news is that the second one is, I think, now finished. There are always details that I would like to change, but this one is good enough to leave on one side. There’s still the question of varnishing, but I’ll wait to take advice on that.

The bad news is that I think I’m going to have to scrap the one I started first. While the other two are in acrylics, this one is in oils and I’ve been dogged by technical problems from the beginning. I’ve had plenty of helpful advice, but for a week or two I’ve been debating whether to start again. Working on the other two has shown me that acrylics can work very well for what I’m trying to do, and I’m developing various techniques to get the effects I’m after. So I think I’m probably better off stretching a fresh canvas for this one, despite my resistance to starting afresh.

It’s the last week of Easter break and the school is still quiet. Less than six weeks of studio time left now, but I’m hoping to have some time towards the end to get back into the print room if I can get the paintings to where I want them.

The school is closed to most people for the holidays, but final year students can come in to work. I’ve done three days this week, trying to keep a momentum of work going.

The week before I built another large stretcher. Installing this in my studio space entailed moving everything around to make room; nearly all the wall space is now taken up with three large canvases. The third one is now primed, and I’ve been making various experiments to see how I might proceed with it. I realised recently that I tend to treat experiments with materials rather casually, and this has led to some works that were almost good enough to be finished pieces but lacked attention to detail. I’m becoming more determined to put as much care as possible into each piece, just in case it turns out successfully. It’s a shame to reject something when it could have turned out well with a little more effort.

I’ve seen a few shows in the last couple of weeks. The Mary Heilmann show at Hauser and Wirth was a disappointment, but the smaller Michael Raedecker show was much more rewarding and I wrote a short review for Interface. I can also recommend David Shrigley’s show at the Hayward.

It’s good to get out of the studio and look at what other people are doing; it helps put your own work in a different perspective.

Looking ahead, we need to get sponsorship for the show catalogue and our own postcards. We’ll be approaching local businesses and doing some events to raise cash. There are seven weeks left before we have to leave the studios so they can be prepared for the show. Work is going well, but I still feel the shortness of time.

Getting on with developing the paintings this week. Here are a few snapshots from the studio.

Building the work gradually in washes of colour, and enjoying the juxtapositions. This slower way of working is new to me, but I’m growing to like it.