ARTISTS TALKING

# 21 [27 April 2008]

I feel in quite a comfortable position at the moment. I have enough work for the degre show but I will continue to make more work to allow me to be more selective.

I painted 12 small paintings on Friday and had more success photographing my work.

 My one concern is my journals. i am seriously behind in these and I am finding it hard to manage them. How can you explore and research when you already have done the work and have a clear idea of what your show is going to be like. I find it difficult to be creative in them atthe moment

# 20 [24 April 2008]

I've more or less finished my second large painting. There is still a bit to do in places as there is on the first one but I shall leave them to dry for a few weeks until I move into my show space then do the finishing touches in the space.

I feel a lot more confortable now that I have broken the back of the large paintings. I am on schedule and have enough work to show. I have two large paintings and 150 smaller paintings. The target is 200 so I've just 50 more to do in the next 4 weeks. I will only actually display about 100 in my show but I want to be able to be selective.

I still have lots of work to do in my journals and my career in practice as well making more work for a solo show that is coming up in July at the Chamber Art Gallery in Moffat, Scotland. I am also taking part in the Wirksworth Festival, Derbyshire so I will need to continue making paintings for the time being.

Our photographer is with us on Monday to shoot the work for the catalogue. I really don't know what painting or image to use. I don't know what is best, to have a shot of a whole painting or a detail shot of part of a painting. Decisions, decisions.

# 19 [21 April 2008]

I discovered today that I have been given the exact amount of space that I had asked for. Brilliant! and I've also been given the space I wanted, my own studio space which is great as I don't have to worry about moving the work eleswhere and I can concentrate on continuing the work in my space.

I had a minor disaster with one of the panels of my latest large paintings. The panels had stuck together because of the acrylic paint between the joins, it is what I had expected and has happened before but I got a little clumsy with the knife when seperating them and sliced a 6 inch gash on one edge! Oops, I've glued it back down and hopefully this will do the trick. Luckily it is in a part of the painting that I had planned to overpaint so not too much damage done.

I'm still having problems photographing my work. I don't know which is the lesser of two evils - A reflective glare over areas of each painting or a duller image. I have sought advice from some photography people so hopefully they can help me out.

# 18 [19 April 2008]

All the photography that I did the other day is just rubbish. I set up a tripod in a well, naturally area and took around 100 photos of my work. When I uploaded them onto the computer they were dreadful. They were all in focus with great detail but the natural light was a bit too strong and light reflected off of everything and looked just horrible. I guess I'll have to do it again but in a well naturally lit (but not in direct light) spot. I don't know if this spot exsists but I'll see what I can do.

I'm getting really fed up of documenting my work, I'm just not very good at it. They come out either blurred, distorted, washed out with light or just plain dull.

Has anyone out there got any tips for photographing paintings? please!

On the plus side I reached the end of the first stage of my second large painting. I'm really happy with it and can't wait to start painting into it with oil paint.

# 17 [17 April 2008]

I'm best part through yet another week albeit a productive week so far.

I've been working into my next large painting and reached the figure of 150 of my small paintings. I now only have to finish this large painting and 50 more of the small paintings and then i'm ready for the show.

I've got to start photographing my work properly starting tomorrow. I've borrowed a tripod for my camera so I will spend the whole of tomorrow taking shots.

Good news on the fundraising front. The Hilton hotel have agreed to supply us with red wine, white wine and sparkling for our degree show. All thanks to Jo Roper from the Fine Art 3rd year!

We are exhibiting the postcard show again (with new cards) at the Brewhouse Art centre in Burton upon Trent on the 10th May if anyone is passing that way - £15 per card and all proceeds go to our final degree show.

# 16 [14 April 2008]

Another week closer to the show and still falling behind schedule.

We had an Exhibition meeting today to discuss the timetable and important stuff concerning the show. Funny, only half of us turned up.

We got the dates that we are given our spaces - May 6th - They are all ours and we can start putting up the show ready for the 30th which is preview night.

We have helpers from the first year Fine Art course who are assigned to help us with putting up the show, painting walls, floors e.t.c - It all seems too close for comfort. I stiill have loads to do yet.

I finished stretching canvas over my new frames then I bolted them together to make a large panel, ready for sizing tomorrow.

My problem at the moment is finding the time to work into my journals, hopefully once this large painting is finished I will be in a better position to work on the journals. I have lots of information, drawings, ideas etc to put into them but it just needs to be collated and inserted.

# 15 [13 April 2008]

I ache all over today and I really need a good nights sleep to get some energy back. It's all the result of yesterday. A group of us from Derby Fine Art 3rd year (along with a few other supporters) did a sponsored walk to raise more funds for our Degree show catalogue. We walked about 7 miles down Dovedale until we cut across into Biggin dale. The weather was quite kind to us really, apart from a few hail showers we got off quite lightly.

An interesting thing I have discovered at University is that it is the same people who are involved in every event and fundraiser. The same people who work so hard and put so much in whilst the same people just can't be bothered or are not in the slightest bit interested. These people will reap the benefit of the small hardworking group's efforts without even having to raise a finger. Is this right? is it fair? probably not. It's just the way it is.

It would be interesting to find out if this scenario is common to other universities or wether it is a curse affecting my year at my university only.

Anyway the walkers did brilliantly and many thanks to James who put on a wonderful spread at his hotel. Biggin Hall afterwards. As always I am astounded by his genorosity. 

# 14 [11 April 2008]

After the elation of painting on a large scale the last 2 days have seemed rather mundane. I have been making 4 new stretcher frames, each one 1.75m x 90cm. I find the whole process of making these very tedious and only hope that in the future I can afford for someone else to make them for me.

All the exhibition tutorials seemed to go well this week and the work that is going to be displayed is so diverse and interesting. I can hardly wait until the opening night on 30th May. It will be a fantastic event with some really strong work.

We get to know what space we have been given next week.

# 13 [10 April 2008]

Had a really good day today!

I didn't start until around midday. I had a few things to do early on and had to buy some bolts to bolt the large painting panels together.

Got into uni and bolted the panels together and then got down to some serious painting. I had a fantastic session and came out of it feeling really good about my painting. I'm extremely pleased at the moment but will probably start picking faults with it straight away and by the time we reach Friday I will probably want to destroy it. (that's the way it usually goes anyway)

I enjoyed the physical act of painting today. This was by far the largest painting I have ever done and I really had a good time putting the paint on with large brushes and even with sweeping brushes.

The painting is 3.6m long and 1.75m tall.

I am really looking forward to doing the next large painting

# 12 [8 April 2008]

Nothing went right today

I t all started this morning when Jewson decided to charge me £62 for some wood for my stretcher frames. I was half asleep and didn't realise until a bit later that this was daylight robbery. I had to go back and get a refund. The real price was £26.

When I got into uni 1 and a half hours later than planned I was informed that I couldn't use the woodwork workshop as the Art level zero group were having workshops all day.

I decided to fall back onto plan B which was bolting the panels together on my larger painting. But I had bought the wrong sized brackets.

I then discovered that the work on the wall of my studio space was still wet. I have nowhere else to put it and need to put the larger paintings up so I can paint onto them.

I then spent about 2 hours trying to find the woman who can sign over the stepladders to me so I could make the walls more stable. Ridiculous, surely the stepladders should always be available. Anyway I couldn't find her in the end and used chairs, tables and window sills instead.

Hopefully I should be able to get some new bolts and brackets tomorrow and join the panels together. I am hoping to do a long day and get the painting up on the wall so that I can paint it tomorrow night. 

So it wasn't that great a day but it was all forgotten when Liverpool beat Arsenal in the Champions League making everything seem good.