December 1, 2008
Otter Gallery trip part 1
So I am waiting for my flight to gatwick at Edinburgh airport and trying to type this on the awkward virtual keyboard on my iPhone. This is part 1 of my trip to Chichester for my exhibition at the university's Otter Gallery of a selection of my Cyprus pictures. Roblog veterans (yes you Barry!) will know of my obsession writing detailed travel details, and I am not going to dissapoint people now.
Here goes; on arrival at Gatwick I pick up a van and then drive to Reading where all my work has been framed by the fabulous Ralph. Then I drive down to emsworth where I am checking into an anonomous travelogdge. Sleep. Then up early and drive to Chichester and start hanging my show with wonderful Bob. All things going well we should have it up by the opening on Wednesday. Now this is not the end of the story, but I will leave further details to another installment.
All this is a wecome break from the relentless pace of my work at eca - which has been ludicrous of late. More of that another time.
Posted by robbie at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2008
Update of March - October
So the last time you heard from me I was out for another visit to Cyprus on the 14th March. It is Now the middle of October and for all you know I have been held hostage there ever since..
Blogging is quite a fun commitment, but has to take second fiddle to living a real life. In this age of Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, FLICKR, perhaps everyone now feels the urge to make sure they update their pages to ensure that their friends, family and colleagues know that they are living a life. I started my blog when I had taken time out of a full on work life when I was living in Hastings over 4 years ago. Back in those giddy days, I got anxious if I did not update my blog two or three times a week showing off my new drawings and paintings. It was fun and a nice way to reacquaint myself and anyone who was interested with being an artist once more. But like all those 'fresh start' diaries I am sure we all started in our youth, the novelty wears out and you start to wonder what you are doing it for. Mostly vanity really - or just showing off.
Anyway - I have two choices. Close it down and be done with it and just get on with the rest of my life or give it yet another go. Hmmmm I am still deciding. If I knew there were thousands of you waiting on baited breath for my next utterances things might be a tad different I guess. Or perhaps there will be generations of artists and academics in the future who will digest and my every word when I am long gone. As I say it is all just vanity.
OK! Here is what I will do; I will write an update once a month summarising what is going on in my world. If I get the urge to write out with these times, then what the hell! Fair enough?
But first I need to provide a summary of the last 6 months - of course I do. So let me try.
March 2008.
My short stay at the Cyprus College of Art in Lemba came to an end. I made around 30 small gouaches and watercolours of varying quality. It was bizarre being there in the early spring when it can be cold and wet. I had a hired car which I accidentally left the handbrake off on a hill when I parked it. It rolled down the hill and only a curb saved it going into a large gully. Phew.
On my way home to Edinburgh I stopped by Hastings to visit my sister Claire and her family. Short but sweet! Thus ended my holidays!
April 2008
Back to work at eca and the long haul towards preparing for Summer School 2008. My ability to paint dried up as I become immersed in this. Once I let go of this, I was ok - but it takes a while to adjust and I never learn that. So life became fairly routine - busy at work, relaxing and functioning at home and not much else in between. Oh, my portrait of Catie I made in January was rejected from the BP portrait award so I plonked it into the Aberdeen Artists at Aberdeen Art Gallery, where it did get an airing at least.
May 2008.
Much the same as April really. Planning Summer School, a bit of teaching and not much else to talk about.
June 2008
Things got particularly frantic at this point. Not only was the Summer School looming large with much to, I was planning and preparing a teaching visit to Tallinn in Estonia. I was to teach one of my week long courses for 'lifelong learners' at the Estonian Academy of Arts and run a weekend workshop for their Art Lecturers in peaceful seaside town called Haapsalu. Tallinn itself is a wonderful place and the people I met, both staff and students were generous and charming. It extremely nervous about the whole affair, but it went extremely well and the students loved the class. So thanks to Anne, Katre, all the students and staff I encountered.
July/August 2008
In my job, you either totally immerse yourself in the Summer School at eca or you sink. Therefore, for most of these weeks in the Summer, I am doing little else - teaching, preparing, hanging exhibitions, running workshops, sorting out teaching spaces, hospitality - I could go on. This year, for a number of factors was particularly onerous for me. So I just have to accept that I cannot make art at this time of the year. We did on occasion venture to an Edinburgh festival exhibition or fringe event.
September 2008
Some deserved time off work. A trip to the Isle of Skye at least got me making some work from direct observation (see Skye 2008 in Picture Galleries), but I doubt whether I will develop a body of work based on this. Although it was fantastic to drive through to the west coast highlands - such a long time since I last visited these parts. On our return to Edinburgh, I made a series of small observational drawings of locations in Edinburgh. I developed some of these in small gouaches to test out whether this was the direction I wished to pursue. But, I still had the nagging doubt that I had not fully developed or resolved my work based on the Wellington Place flat. So, as with the same time last year, I made another series of directly observed oils. Some are small and very loose and some have a figurative dimension added as I was painting. I am really enjoying the direct observation and I can thank Catie for this, who has even influenced me to make some oils outside.
October 2008
Despite being back at work at eca, I have managed to continue to make some progress in the work. I also am preparing the work for a show of a selection of my Cyprus pictures at the University of Chichester's Otter Gallery in December - but more about that in another blog entry.
Posted by robbie at 6:41 AM | Comments (1)
March 14, 2008
Cyprus art 2008
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After nearly a week out here in Cyprus, I have made a series of small watercolour and gouaches mostly from direct observation from my drives around the island. I am only here until next wednesday, so I do not expect to develop them until I get back. If I can get at least two new works for my show in Chichester then i will be very happy.
Weather remains a mixed bag. We had a spectacular thunderstorm the other night and today is extremely windy. I think my images at least convey that it is not the summer and I must admit, that when you take the heat away from Cyprus, it does all look a bit tacky.
I am going to make a prediction that Wales will lose against France tomorrow (6 nations rugby) and not win the grand slam - I would like them too, and I am going to visit a welshman tomorrow to watch the match in a cyprus cafe.. but I am not optimistic.
Posted by robbie at 1:53 PM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2008
Cyprus again
So here I am 5 days into being in Cyprus. I decided to go out as my research bid to go to India fell on deaf ears. I am spending nearly two weeks at Cyprus School of Art in Lemba trying to make some additional works for my show in Chichester in December. I have hired a car and have been drving around and doing small watercolour and gouaches to work from when i get home. So far so good - no major breakthroughs and the work is quite familiar to my other jaunts here.
It is weird being here when the weather is moderate (but still tropical compared with Edinburgh) - the place seems more pedestrian because of it. There are very few students here and two left this week. However it is very nice to get away from work at eca before the onslaught of Summer School.
I will post some of the new pictures soon.
Posted by robbie at 8:51 PM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2008
Portraits, Leith, Cyprus and India
Time marches on. It is now nearly the end of term 2 at Edinburgh College of Art and I am sitting at home, having taken a few days off with a bad bug. This has given me time at last to freshen up my website and preen some of the gallery pages from all the inconsequential work. Since I started this version of the website in 2004, I tended just to put up all the work I did at the time, probably just to prove that I am still making work. When I was painting in Hastings, I was just so pleased to be making any art at all, that every scrap of creativity went up. Now, with the chance to review and edit it down to one page, my Hastings period reveals to me a time of relearning my skills and re-evaluating what picture making means to me. I am still very proud of the fact that I have taken risks in my employment, which has always been informed by trying to find the right balance between making art and facilitating education.
So, now I find myself in year in to my new life in Edinburgh. Catie has moved up and is also painting and teaching. My job role at eca has been fluid flexible and quite demanding. But, I am still managing to paint as I have finally realised that I have to use most of my available free time to make art if I am ever going to develop. This has meant far fewer opportunities to see family and friends and far less gallivanting across the country or abroad.
From the period I moved to Leith with Catie, I have solely used the interior of our rented Georgian townhouse flat as a backdrop for subject matter. I have done more direct observational drawing and painting than I have since I was a student, and I have learned so much by doing so. I think it has recharged my pictorial armoury and freed me from the often-tiresome need for inventing compositional devices. Using a combination of biographical with observed topographical elements has allowed me to reflect on a more explicit portrait of my new life with Catie. While I have maintained my gut need for flippancy and irony in the use of a collection of soft toy animals, I am trying to evoke a greater depth of time and place.
Most recently, I have completed a large two panel portrait of Catie with our soft toys (the bears!) revealing the exuberant and delightful space we live in. The carrot for this was to enter the BP portrait award. While I am pleased with the ambition of the picture and its sense of place, I am not sure whether it works on the level of a portrait and I am not optimistic that it will be successful in being accepted for the show.
Here are eight stages of the portrait which I did almost entirely from working in situe over about 5 weekends.
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I have three other things I am developing;
In December, I am showing at the Otter Gallery in Chichester, a compendium of works I did from the times I visited and worked Cyprus from 2002 to the present. There is also a possibility to show it in Cyprus College of Art later and I am trying to pull together a catalogue and possibly find a venue in Edinburgh also. I have never shown most of this work before and I am delighted to finally have the opportunity. I hope to make one more visit to Cyprus to complete the cycle of work for the show.
While I have been living in Leith and particularly Leith Links, I have started to research its history and how it remains such a distinctive and vibrant part of Edinburgh. The history of the Links themselves is fascinating, having been the place of the first golf course and the base for Oliver Cromwell’s men. Therefore, my next series of artworks are going to use my research as the background for what I hope will be a new pictorial development in my work. For further information see here.
I am also trying to find ways to make an extended visit to India to develop new lines of research. I have discovered that in the new India with one of the fasting growing economies in the world, there is a newfound confidence in contemporary painting that uses narrative and sense of place. Directly at odds with esoteric contemporary western art, this new art celebrates both hand skills and crafts, yet places itself in a world of mass media and conceptual ideas. I feel there is much for me to learn and experience and I am waiting with baited breadth, the result of a research funding application.
Posted by robbie at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)