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.

Being Professional

I've just asked Daniel to add the information about studying Painting and Printmaking at
Bath Academy of Art in the 1960s, to the Home page of my website.
It seems obvious now that it should be included, but I hadn't really thought about it, until recently.
Having my Retrospective at the Babylon Gallery has given me a taste for pushing the work to a wider audience.
 I have decided to try and get another exhibition  within the next ten years (80th birthday party?). It won't be easy, because as I don't sell my paintings,  I can't approach a commercial gallery.
As I intend to  refer to the website, to any Curator's I approach, it seems only right that I should have something in about my early training.
I've already had a very nice letter of refusal from the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, but that was before we put this information in.
 Maybe I'll try him again in a few years time.

Did The Boats Come In?

When I made my painting 'If The Boats Come' (you can see it on my website) I used the model boats we always sail at Sheringham every year, as a metaphor for returning members of the family.
Since some of the boats in the painting are represented as knitted and beginning to unravel (or are they been drawn in?) the work attempts to raise  questions about family ties, and how strong they might be.
The attendance at the get together was disappointing compared to other years, when nearly thirty family members had come for the weekend. However, there had been a good turnout at Magnus's wedding at Christmas and my 70th birthday brought  twenty six of us together. Another group of the family  had lunch in France earlier this month and some will be meeting up again for Emily's birthday in a few weeks time.
 Leo (from New Zealand), Max and Ben did ring us up while we were in Sheringham, to see if we were coping without them  - and yes, we still sailed the boats.

The Three Bears

I have used the TV puppet, Sooty, several times in my paintings, namely for 'Duet' and 'Offrenda' (you can see the latter in the link from the PRINTS FOR SALE page on my website).
 Visitors to  Ted Coney's Family Portraits  always see the archive material for each painting and the ones using Sooty are no exception. I have a collection of  ephemera dating back 60 years, including puppets, models, books etc.
I already had  Sooty handpuppets from the 1950s and 1980s, so I was delighted to discover a third one from about 1970 in the loft (did we breed it?) recently.
Sooty has gradually transformed from a pale yellow rat like creature into the cuddly orange teddy bear he is today.
I noticed that Sooty has recently returned to television, where he first appeared in the early fifties. To celebrate,  I bought a Sooty comic from the newsagents to add to my collection. (about every ten years it's interesting to see how the style of graphics changes)