Peace Painting Project

One of three Peace Paintings, Road To Peace, is currently exhibited in the first Lincolnshire Virtual Open Exhibition.

It’s titled Road To Peace, or sometimes And Our Heroes Have Misplaced Their Map, and is available for sale priced at £5000.

It will remain in the exhibition until it is sold, which makes a change from exhibitions where work doesn’t sell, but the exhibition ends.

Once it sells, I can upload newer work.

Buyers can purchase the work directly from my website here

Available as an original, or as digital prints.

Last year, I produced three paintings for Peace Painting following lockdown.

This was possible after my youngest son was given the life experiences we expected him to have, and got a new job, after a period of ten months’ destitution in 2019, then finally being awarded Universal Credit, and then employment.

With the support we had from City Of Lincoln Council to resolve those issues during lockdown, I could then refocus on my own practice, and these paintings came from lockdown photos around the city juxtaposed with older photos from Oslo, Norway – Visit Norway has the marketing tagline “Dream now, visit later”, which of course, was all anyone could do in 2020.

The view from The Viking Way at the top of South Common, Lincoln, almost mirrors the view from Ekebergparken, Oslo, from where Edvard Munch painted The Scream.

So I decided to juxtapose the two views to create an imagined landscape.

On another bike ride during lockdown, I went to search for evidence of the Lincolnshire Conchies. My eldest son was fortunate enough to work with actor Jim Broadbent when he was an extra in the film The Young Victoria, for scenes filmed at Lincoln Cathedral.

It was Jim Broadbent’s father Roy Broadbent, who led the Lincolnshire Conchies, and I sadly missed the play about them whilst dealing with austerity…

The second Peace Painting is from a bike ride to Holton-Cum-Beckering, of Lincolnshire fields, and Lincolnshire sky. The sky has no military ruining it. Only doves.

The woman is an Afghan refugee from a photograph where she is sewing facemasks during the current global pandemic. She is sewing with a golden thread.
The third painting is a field of white poppies – Papaver Somniferum – grown in fields in Lincolnshire for the pharmaceutical industry, juxtaposed with Lincolnshire skies being inhabited by two Syrian boys feeding a flock of doves.

All three are acrylic on canvas.
40 x 50cm
£5000 where sold.

I spent most of last year applying for Arts Council grant funding for the next stage of Peace Painting, however, even when I received feedback, and adapted the proposal to consider the feedback, and advice from the a-n team at the Assembly event in Leeds, it was still getting rejected. I reapplied a few times before I had to refocus my energies on something more positive.

I was very keen to continue with Peace Painting, but it seems that priority is given to BAE Systems to go into Primary Schools and teach children to have a career in the armed forces, presumably dropping bombs on Yemeni children.

I did consider crowdfunding as an option, but other issues are taking priority at the moment due to my role as a carer – see Artist As Carer blog.

I’ve been putting together an Arts Council grant application since March, between caring responsibilities and zero hours contract work, whilst also starting to think about my own practice for Peace Painting.

It’s almost ready to submit, so once I’ve double checked it, this will be submitted by mid May. If successful, I will start work on studio practice from July, with more Peace Painting workshops proposed for September 2017 in the new school year.

I have been making some initial work for my own practice for Peace Painting, developing some ideas and concepts.

And I’m very inspired how the ideas are developing, especially as I’ve found a way to combine this new way of working with my old digital practice, at least, I hope I have. I’m still considering it.

If the application isn’t successful, then I will need to spend more time (that I don’t really have, and will not be paid for) reapplying, and delaying the project.

So fingers crossed that this time it’s successful so I can get on with developing the project and new work further!

Back in February (and I thought I’d already posted a blog in here!) I ran an hour’s Peace Painting workshop at The Collection Museum and Art Gallery, organised via Paradigm Arts.

I thought initially that this would be a talk for teachers about the Peace Painting Project, but I had to put together an ad hoc workshop.

Further images and details are in this blog.

I’ve since been experimenting with a few ideas for my own work and discovering that I have had to set up an all-new profile for Grantium.

Rob and I agreed to apply for Arts Council grant funding this spring, however, Catrine has sent me a brochure to use to send to companies in the UK to seek sponsorship and funding for the project.

I picked up a brochure from NSEAD and had a read of it recently to give me some ideas for the project.

I haven’t applied for Arts Council grant funding since 2014. I became completely disillusioned that any of my proposals, no matter how good, bad, big or small, would be accepted and funded.

Even when I had advice, I was made to feel that it’s simply a waste of time putting together proposals, and wasn’t in any position financially to risk it any more.

I have started work on one again, which is a bit like the description a lovely couple gave of visiting their son on the acute ward at the mental health hospital…..

But as I could be made destitute by Universal Credit next month, it’ll be a miracle if I get time to finish it….