The photo above is from one of the few dry days this month, it has been absolutely grim! Still, you’ll be pleased to know, the diggers have gone and peace is restored, YAY!!!!

Oh and that means there is an audio file to accompany this newsletter, just click the link above!

The first job for this month’s news is to let you all know that the show I mentioned at The Tarpey Gallery is now on, and looking wonderful; such a lovely gallery space…and I’m delighted to be part of it! Tarpey Gallery is in Castle Donington in the UK, and very easily accessible from the M1, so it really is well worth a trip if you can squeeze one in!

Full details are available on this link: https://tarpeygallery.com/exhibition/tarpey-gallery-open-2023/

I’m also thrilled to be able to share with you, that I will be showing new work with the very wonderful Silson Contemporary Gallery in Harrogate…this is really early notice as the show runs in their Winter/ Spring slot, so I will obviously send more updates nearer the time.

For now, sufficient to say that it is a beautiful gallery with a wonderful aesthetic, and fantastic curation by the Gallerist and owner, Sarah Collier, so I can’t wait!

I’ve been busy in the studio, finishing off some work and starting some new…the studio journal page above is for one of the pieces I’ve recently finished. It’s called, (a little enigmatically I admit), We All Need An Ocean, and it comes from the experience of walking deserted beaches up in Dumfries and Galloway, in Southern Scotland. There is such a tangible sense of space and air; exhilarating and calming at the same time- if that makes any sense at all? Anyway, for me open space is something that really fires my imagination and triggers ideas for work.

This painting is just over 76cm x 76cm, on a particularly lovely heavy quality canvas, and now framed in a bespoke hand painted tray frame. We All Need An Ocean, is painted in many layers of acrylic paint, with overlaid colours and some very subtle drawn details. It’s available now, so do hit the button below if you would like to know more!

For a very long time now, I’ve been mulling over what to do about my work/ archive. The background to this is that I really don’t like admin tasks, and do tend to prevaricate a lot-but to be fair, I’ve also found it increasingly difficult to keep track of paintings effectively. Until now that has meant my own admittedly very clunky Excel sheets, and the reason that it’s tricky is that I really want to keep everything in the same place; sizes, media, framing, price, sold, gallery, exhibition, collector, collection or body of work and background information, plus a large format and smaller format image. When I managed to get all the right info: together, I found it still wasn’t straightforward to share it-for instance if you’re working with a Gallery and you want to select specific works to send them, or indeed if you need to send some potential pieces to an existing collector.

Anyway, I got really frustrated when it took me hours and hours to send some work to a collector this month, and I gave in and signed up for Artwork Archive. Before I go any further, I should say that I am not getting any sponsorship from them or anyone else in fact. So far I’ve just made a start with it-I’ve signed up at the basic level, as I wanted to keep costs down. You get a very easy to use space to add all your work, with details, prices etc…and pretty much anything you want to include. You also get a load of templates for sharing work, which are also very easy to use-I put together selected images which upload whatever info: you choose, for a client a couple of days ago, and it took me a few minutes instead of a couple of hours…. I always feel short of time, particularly precious studio time, so that is a big win in itself.

They also have their own public art space which allows you to share any work you want, with links and a Bio etc…I’m not at all sure how useful that will be, but it is somewhere you can direct people to look. There are loads of other features that I haven’t explored yet, anyway so far so good-I’ll update you when I know more!!

If you fancy a look yourself, this is the link: Artwork Archive

The photo before is one of my public pages on their Discovery Platform.

For some reason, I’ve been on a bit of a ‘blue’ kick this month…I walk past a little pool, that’s pretty tucked away and always quiet…you can watch Water Boatmen and Dragonflies skimming the surface and yesterday there were some Moorhens poking around in the reeds…

The idea to make a painting based on the pond came in a rush, and unusually didn’t mull around in my head for ages. It’s painted with opaque base layers, overlaid with translucent glazes and loads of drawn detail- just finished and ready for waxing.

The Hidden Pool is a metre square on a deep canvas, and will be framed in a bespoke hand painted tray frame.