Through An Artist’s Eye

No fancy title for this blog – just what it says on the can. Naturally, I urge you to go and see Through An Artist’s Eye while it is on in Esher – just 5 minutes away from Hampton Court. It has been designed for this space, and though it will be exhibited elsewhere (and this has been part of the calculation) it is a unique configuration, made especially powerful by the proximity to Felicia Browne’s birthplace.

This has been such a gradual yet intense build-up to a showing of works, with each stage so carefully crafted that it has been astonishing to it’s creator (me) to be both the hand that installed the work (with Sarah Mossop) and witness to it’s final coming together.

Ours is perhaps a most curious and singular example of a profession (the artist at a certain level), in which we must take on so very many roles in order to bring a project to fruition?

I have been project instigator/developer, lead creative, manager, writer/director, marketer, driver, technician, & probably many more things my tired brain can’t recall right now.

Not surprising then that it takes some days (and perhaps weeks) to absorbed what has been achieved alongside a brilliant team of people whose contribution has been crucial. I was the engine but they provided the fuel – in each case the collaboration has been immensely enriching and brought me on as a professional artist. This kind of development is exactly what ACE funding is intended to bring about.

It’s incredibly gratifying then to have received such high praise from the great Adam Feinstein – biographer of Pablo Neruda, poet and journalist. I hope Arts Council England get round to reading his endorsement. Public money well spent – and our PV was very well attended too. But we’re ambitious – we’d love more people to come and see what we did.

“For anyone interested in the Spanish Civil War (which started eighty years ago), you must see the superb exhibition, ‘Through an Artist’s Eye – Felicia Browne and the Spanish Civil War’. Felicia was an enormously talented British artist who enrolled in the Spanish Republican militia to fight Franco in the summer of 1936. Tragically, she was killed on her very first mission. This show features Felicia’s wonderful sketches and letters from Spain, as well as beautiful artwork by contemporary artist Sonia Boué and memorable poems by Jenny Rivarola (both daughters of Spanish Repubican exiles). This exceptional exhibition runs daily until October 29 at All Saints Church, Chestnut Avenue, Esher, KT10 8JL.”

Adam Feinstein.

Photos by Jim Jump, featuring Meirian Jump – MML manager & archivist, Professor Tom Buchanan and writer Jenny Rivarola.

Through An Artist’s Eye project has officially launched. I probably should have called this post BLAST OFF!

Ridiculously, as I sit here writing, the start to all the episodes of Thunderbirds I ever saw with my tiny son are replaying in my brain. Air punching and shrieking featured back then but (he’s eighteen now and) me and my trusty team barely raised a high five on the night of our launch due to the sheer exhaustion of it all. We should have gone full air punch and shrieks though – it was AMAZING.

I’m calling it instead, the eye fluttering finish post, because, well, photographs. Most of pics of me on the night feature the old eye flutter. Yes – that blurry eyes shut moment where you have paused to gather yourself while in mid flow. Don’t ask me why but that is me in nearly every shot! Fortunately it’s not all about me and there are some cracking shots of my wonderful colleagues in full eyes open and quite beautifully mellifluous flow.

The Marx Memorial Library is an extraordinary building and it was good to stand next to old Marx on the night – so good was my feeling about this place and it’s archive of Spanish Civil War material that I had a new idea. What?!

Yes – I did. SO watch this space.

For further events, including our exhibition please look HERE.