August 26, 2004
Back from Stranraer
Well, now I am back from my week long trip to visit my mum in Stranraer with my sister, Claire and her children, Harper and Mae. We had a fine trip despite the weather being a lot colder and wetter. I wasn’t planning to do a lot of drawing, but I ended up doing some at the Logan Botanic Garden which was a lovely place.
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I don’t, however, think I am going to to suddenly produce a whole series of botanic garden pictures. Not just yet anyway.
While it was great to get away, I am gagging at the bit to get on with my painting. John Martin of London have asked me for work for the AAF Contemporary Art Fair in New York (formerly the New York Affordable Art Fair). So, I am now busy getting pictures framed etc.
On top of this, I have a job interview for a Painting Fellow at Lancaster University on the 3rd of September. But, actually, it is nice to be busy in this way; to do with my art, rather than busy with beurocracy.
So yesterday I found a great framer in George Street in the Old Town of Hastings who can do it in time and is very reasonable. So now, I can at last get back to my painting down the studio..
Posted by robbie at 9:25 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2004
Good Day in the Studio....at Last
As I am going to visit my mum in Stranraer for the next few days, I was determined to have a good day in the studio and leave feeling good about my work. So I spent all day just working on my major Battle at Chichester Cross painting, and I think I made some headway. See what you think for yourself….
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Actually, when I got down to my studio, I found that there was a band rehearsing in the room beneath my mezzanine in the roof of the warehouse where I work. They are a sort of Franz Ferninand local group, apparently on the verge of the big time. Normally, they rehearse in the evenings, but I haven’t caught them ‘at it’, until today. They are a six peice outfit (with a sitarist) and they had a record producer listening to them today. So, it was all boys bickering about volume levels and the producer telling them they need to start being able to ‘edit’ their own sound and not try to outplay each other…
Well instead of annoying me as I expected it would, I rather got into a wee world of my own and just decided to paint for the pure hell of it. And I think I had a good day. I had stopped protecting the figures on the left hand side which I had left since I blocked it in ititially as I had liked the spirit of it. I also worked into the monument a bit and the receding background.
Last thing today, I decided to put a dark and prominent figure of a women on the road facing the buggies as if to confront them verbally. Well, the ice cream van didn’t work there (sorry no pictures of that aborted attempt) so I thought - ‘what the hell’.
And you know, it is a bit crude at the moment, but I think it is what the painting has been waiting for. It gives the painting more of a ‘subject’ which it was perhaps lacking. It is still terribly rough and badly drwn in places, but I think I can pull it off now. Going to have to wait a week until I come back from Scotland.
Posted by robbie at 5:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2004
a day drawing around hastings
Not able to face up to getting stuck into my big painting at the studio, I spent most of yesterday wandering around hastings (after I had posted my job applications) and trying to draw in my book.
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| Hastings Town | Ice Cream Van | View from Castle |
This of course was entirely diversion tactics as I am putting off facing up to the challange of completing my big painting Battle at Chichester Cross. So, after I had posted my job applications, I went for a long wander around a fairly busy and sunny Hastings. I was actually trying to get people as I have become concerned that the people in my paintings have become far too generic. I need to relook at faces, posture and clothing styles. I actually found this quite difficult as every time I started to draw someone , they would notice and start to scowl at me. Terrifiying! So locations once again became the thing and I would try to quickly capture faces as they passed me by.
I had it in my head to put an ice crem van on the road in my Battle painting. I thought it would add some much needed irony into this pseudo serious subject. So I found an ice cream van at just the right angle viewed from the green by Hastings Castle. “Excellent’, I thought once I had done the drawings.
So I went straight down to the studio to paint in the van. Way Hey!! Two hours of puroseful painting passed and then I sat down to ponder at what I had done. It was awful!!! it ditracted so much from the overall scheme and had now become ‘ice cream van at chichester cross’. I thought of ways in which I could readjust the tone and colour, but in the end I wiped the van, Then I had another two anxiuos hours painting while I tried to rescue the whole painting. When you wipe something off, it makes the whole painting look dirty and mirky.
Only when I go down today, will I know how bad or good things got yesterday.
Posted by robbie at 8:52 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2004
Battle for Chichester Cross
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Here is a preview of the unfinished painting I am working on which I described on 12th August.
Posted by robbie at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)
Procrastination
Why is it when you get a few days to yourself, instead of getting on with stuff, your mind and body seize up and you can’t get round to doing all the stuff you thought you should be doing??? Or is it just me.
Or is it just me. It has taken me two days to complete two job application forms for teaching (both of which, interesting enough, are in Lancashire but at different institutions). Anyway, what with the cricket, the olympics (isn’t syncronised diving a hoot - seriously) and web pages to tinker with, I have not been back down the studio to complete my masterpieces…. hmmmm. I will this afternoon.
I have a HTML code phobia, but I needed to know how to put this blog site within my website without using frames. I was rather pleased with myself for discovering from a HTML lesson website about using ilinks and now you can read my blog from within the safety of my website.
Except when I email web designer, consultant, guru and general great guy Dug, he tell me that ilinks suck and that I should just put my whole website from within my blogsite so that the whole thing is integrated…. he may be right, but it does involve getting stuck in with code… I need some lessons.
Talking of which I am thinking of doing some part time courses at Hastings College. They have all sorts of interesting things for me to do - carpentry, spanish, web design, tefl…. Think I will go a speak to someone there and sign up for one or two.
Spent a good deal of yesterday emailing several London galleries to let them know I exist and whether they would show my work. In fact, it is the completely wrong time to be doing this as so many of them shut during the balmy month of August. However, I did get one reply back from the Portal Gallery who said:
Many thanks for sending us a notification about your work. Unfortunately looking at the your website your work is too loose and painterly for the Portal Gallery house style which is very specific. However I wish you the best of luck in the future.
And I have also had feedback from the past that my work is too tight for another gallery… oh well - like goldilocks I will find the one that is just right at some point.
Posted by robbie at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2004
Let the Blogging Begin
Scottish artist at the crossroads of his life, ditches successful career running a University Fine Art degree course. He needs to paint so he sells all is belongings, moves to Hastings, UK and paints and paints and paints…. Now he needs somewhere to show it and some people to like it and some to buy it….
Live the work at www.robbiebushe.co.uk
This is my first blog. Go easy on me. I am not a writer. As you can see. Been in Hastings over 6 months now. My life back in Chichester seems a stranger’s life. I was heading up a small provincial fine art department at University College Chichester. I did it for four and a half years. I had to stop. I really had to stop. There was nothing for me there and I had to be a grown up too much of the time. To be an artist, you need time not to be a grown up. I will no doubt reveal more of my time in Chichester as this blog progresses but I could write pages of bitter resentment about my time in Chichester. So I wont. Not now.
Except for one thing. I am currently painting a picture about chichester. 6 months after I left. It has been gurgling away in my head as an idea for over a year. It is a very naff idea so I have kept putting it off. It is provisionally titled ’ Battle for Chichester Cross’ and it is 5’ wide and 4 ‘high. I have been painting it now for ten days. I will post an image of it here once I have taken a picture of it. But it is still a long way off being completed.
What is it like? Let me know how naff this sounds: All that remains of chichester in the picture is the monument at Chichester Cross, where North, East, South and West streets meet. There are many people riding (driving?) those state of the art mobilty buggies as if they were riding into a great battle. The rest of the painting is peopled with the good middle classes not sure how to react to this impending anslaught of the buggies. All this lit by a dramatic orange sky. What is it about - well I am tryin to work it out. All I know is that I want it to be a fantastic epic of cinematic proportions…. more of this some other time.
Last night I was dressed as a pink flamingo. Honest.
It was Hastings Old Town Festival pram race and I was called in as a last minute recruit to Hasting’s pub ‘First Inn Last Out’ (Filo) entry. Andy and Anna (who were organising this) decided to go as pink flamingos with a wheelbarrow instead of a pram with someone (jay) dressed up as an egg riding in the barrow. So myself, Andy , Anna, Rachel, Jo, Tara and Jay entered the race. The objective was to visit 20 Hastings Old Town pubs and ask for a question. If we got the question wrong we would take a forfeit (chilli vodka, dunk for apples in horrible goo…etc.). Well we did it, but we didn’t win any of the large range of prizes on offer. I staggered home over the east hill at about 1.00am.
Today I painted a little version of us all dressed up in our pink flamingo outfits as Andy had lost his disposable camera on route and I thought we should have some sort of record of how we looked. So I did a wee painting from memory.
I am alone this evening as my sister Claire and her tow kids Harper and Mae are off to Leeds to meet up with Claire’s partner David who is directing No Angels for Channel 4. Which is why I am finally starting my blog as I need to keep busy lest I fall in front of the television.
I think that is enough for now. I will see how I go over the next week and whether I can maintan a blog which is useful and interesting.
Posted by robbie at 8:26 PM | Comments (1)