I have just spent a very busy morning with the Updown Gallery in Ramsgate helping them to set up the wonderful Piers Secunda’s show.
Another wonderful insight into the workings of this gallery. The owners are such lovely people and are genuinely very happy for any help. I was mainly set to work with the painting of a plinth and labelling – not too taxing! Being sat at the reception desk it was great to watch the goings on within the gallery.
Piers’s work is tactile, quiet and beautiful. All of which belie the violent sources of his inspiration. He is fascinated with how oil is such an integral parts of our daily lives. The attached image is of Texan oil fields printed onto slabs of floor paint together with an exquisite puzzle ball of seventeen mobile layers.
All the amazing sculptures and paintings are made with the floor paint and so even the three dimensional works are described as paintings.
The show runs from the 21st June to 27th July and is well worth a visit.
Well, it’s finally over. One door shuts and another opens. The past weeks have been chaotic, stressful, joyful and just plain hideous but at least we were all working towards a goal. I am so grateful to the people on my course that were so instrumental in helping towards a wonderful degree show. Once all the work was put up it looked fantastic and my littlest boy served fresh Kentish strawberries to all the visitors.
The feedback I had on my work was overwhelming and a gallery bought two pieces – one is going to hang next to an Anish Kapoor! I can’t quite believe that myself but there you go! So far the feedback from the tutors has been enormously positive and I am keeping my fingers crossed for a gold star!
Rather than feeling bereft that it is all over, I am rather excited. Helpful friends are suggesting contacts and I have some teaching in schools over the forthcoming weeks. I have also donated a painting to a charity auction (obviously to raise money and also my profile!) I sold the piece that I was going to donate so I had better get on and make another one pronto! It is an exciting prospect being let loose on the world and I hope that I can keep up some sort of momentum. I have entered some competitions and will restart networking again. Hopefully I will be invited to join the Collective at the London West Bank Gallery this autumn again which will give me a goal to work towards. A friend from Brighton has asked me to be involved with Coastal Currents and I am meeting her at the PV at Hastings College next week to talk it through.
I will be taking my work down on Monday and now have the dilemma of how to transport all the paintings at once. They are very fragile so I have a feeling duvets will be involved in their journey home!
