Glossy Enough?

A few weeks ago, the editor of the magazine 'Cambridge' came to visit Ted Coney's Family Portraits.
This was with a view to doing an article for the November issue about my work and the pop-up gallery. She seemed very enthusiastic at the time, even talking about the different paintings she wanted to be photographed, but I have not heard from her since.
As it is one of those lifestyle magazines, maybe we were not glossy enough, or fitted into their idea of a perfect home?!
The gallery has been featured in such magazines as 'Agenda' and 'Venue' before (see my NEWS AND REVIEWS page), but maybe this one was not interested in my work enough, but were to polite, to say.
 If I don't hear by next week, I shall assume it is off. At least the editor took the trouble to come.

Flying Green

It was suggested (though tactfully) that I was overacting a bit, during filming a sequence for my new virtual tour on the theme of 'Simultaneity'. I was trying to put a bit of action into the scene, where I appear, 'Tardis like' to be flying back in time to  Hollywood in my 1931 Morris Minor.
This was to help describe the ideas behind my painting 'Dear Reginald Owen', in which I am contrasting the  search for somewhere to live in 1930s America by a cousin of mine, with our discovery of a new location in this country.
To create the illusion that I was flying through space in the car, Colin (who is making the film) covered some of the windows with green paper, so that he can project moving images onto them, later.
You will be able to access the tour from my website eventually, but for now you might like to see a photo of me in action - just click on the Facebook icon, to the left of any page on
Ted Coney's Family Portraits.

After The Black Square

With all the hype about the 'Matisse Cutouts' exhibition, I thought I had better go and see it before it closed.
What interested me most, were some of his semi abstract dance figures painted  for the Barnes mural. The way they disappeared off the edges of the composition is something I would like to achieve in my next painting 'Against the Light'. I am using the images of the 1930s comics, Laurel and Hardy to represent my mother's cousins, Billy and Dickie, but I want to suggest their shapes, rather than make them too obvious as characters.
I also found the other exhibition  on at Tate Modern, very useful. This was a retrospective of the Russian artist, Malevich, who painted the ultimate picture, the 'Black Square' painting.
However, after painting himself into a corner, as it were, he started to produce more figurative images again. These were highly stylised figures and the way he applied the paint might also be useful for the way I want to work.
So, all in all, a very useful, if exhausting day.

 

Down Your Way

It was the Charles Darwin exhibition that I saw several years ago at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which inspired my painting ' Love That Dares '  (which you can see on the ART LECTURE page of my website.)
 Darwin's thoughts on animal's use camouflage to protect themselves, in his book 'Origins of the Species'  made me think about how I could translate the idea onto humans. In the event, I displayed animals in my painting too, albeit puppet ones!
 The title of my painting suggests a more hopeful sign for the future - you don't have to be one of the crowd to survive.
Anyway, we finally got to visit Darwin's family home, Down House, last weekend, and see where all his ideas and experiments were done.
 We also viewed his Billiard room and got rid of all his stress.