SARGENT STEVENSON
John Singer Sargent was no revolutionary artist but his capacity for effortless representation is pretty much beyond discussion. Being a bit of a Sargent fan has been one of my best kept secrets since seeing the Tate Gallery exhibition in the 1990′s – It’s hard to imagine London before the Tate Modern now!. The thing...
STRANGE ART FOR A STRANGE PLACE
It’s been quite a few weeks since I opened my installation in Majorca and I can now look back at it with some perspective: it’s got to be the strangest project I’ve ever done. I certainly didn’t set out to do anything weird but you don’t get to do a project for an olive oil...
WORKING WITH THAT ‘EL GRECO’ GUY
I’ve used golden paint before and have been wanting to use it again for some time, but the real novelty for me has been working around previous paintings. I’ve dealt with music, literature and films in my projects, but painting about other people’s paintings just never seemed right to me, like the work’s...
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
A Studio With a View is a year old today! I’ve never been very good with birthday parties, save Harold Pinter’s extraordinary play and Nick Cave’s gothic rock band. I’ve had an excellent time writing about art and books and music and other things I like to waste my time with, and would...
DRAWING THE SUMMER
After obsessing with my artwork and exhibitions throughout the year I find that relaxing and not thinking about art is difficult when the summer comes. Swimming and going to the beach work wonders, but funnily enough what I find really works is… drawing; straightforward unpretentious drawing from life. I carry a sketch book and bunch...
THE BLANK GALLERY / LA GALERÍA EN BLANCO
Some months ago while I was in the early stages of Of Canyons and Stars, my art project that’s just gone on show, I wrote about the implications of the blank canvas, and as I worked on the installation of the exhibition a few days ago, shuffling the paintings and sculptures from one...
GALLERY TIME / HORA DE GALERÍA
The chaos in my studio has finally come to an end and my new project, “Of Canyons and Stars” is packed and ready to travel to the gallery in Seville where it will be on show as from Thursday 23rd of May (opening 20:00). “Of Canyons and Stars” is a project based on...
THERE IT IS! / ¡AHÍ ESTÁ!
As I pedalled away cycling to my teaching job today, I sought consolation in the thought of how the initial frustration of not being able to go to the studio often evolves into an interesting exchange with my students that ends up in an experience we all benefit from. I pulled into the...
ONE WORD LANGUAGE
I’ve always been interested in conceiving painting as a language, a visual code for communicating something about external reality, ideas or feelings; and when I begin a new project I try to create a new code to work on it with. For my current project – the one based on the music by Olivier...
OLIVIER MESSIAEN: MY MAN IN THE SAINTE-TRINITÉ
Olivier Messiaen was a devout Catholic who for sixty years played the organ at the Sainte-Trinité Church in Paris and who loved birds and their songs to the point of often referring to himself as an ornithologist rather than a musician. He was also one of the most original and radical...
TRON, LEWITT, GRIDS AND I
I reached my friends house and pressed the doorbell button knowing that it wouldn’t work as it hadn’t since I had known him, though I always insisted on myself pressing it as if renouncing to do so would mean something like accepting an imperfect world. The fourteen year old me entered the dark...
HONOLULU MON AMOUR
Simon Zabell, “The Sky Above Honolulu”, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 170 x 200 cm (66.9 x 78.8 inches) As I watched them walk away with my bubble-wrapped painting and load it into their truck, I got that same feeling that comes over me every time a painting leaves the studio to become...
All schools should be art schools.
