Busy busy this weekend. I composed four paintings, drawing out three and transferring them to panel. These are: Imaginary Flight Of The Victorious Narcissist and Iterations Of Isolation (the composition of those was largely complete, I just had to draw them), Love Without Sex (new composition of an idea from 2009) and Giant Looking At His Friends The Clouds which was composed but nothing more done yet. This is about as fast as I can work.
On Friday the picture above was put on display in the Lyceum Theatre, it's called The Resurrection Of The Lyceum In 1911 and was painted for the theatre's centenary celebrations which are now taking place. It's my largest painting to date (about 1x1.5 metres) and took about 28 full days to create.
Today I've been painting again, a picture called The Mathematics of Nazimova, which is actually a repainting of one I started in January. That one wasn't accurate enough for me, but it looked pretty enough so it took some time for me to decide whether it was worth repainting. It was, and the new version is more accurate, and is smoother despite taking just one day; the other took two. Incidentally, Nazimova is the name of a silent film star, the painting is nothing to do with Nazis!
My exhibition in Sevens in Macclesfield closes today and was a success, resulting in at least the sale of two limited edition prints. I sold a painting earlier in the month in Macclesfield too, making this a good month for painting sales. In September I'll aim to paint my remaining ideas and try to complete as much as possible before writing music in October.
My biggest mistake of the past couple of years has been changing track, chasing competitions and opportunities that require new artwork, thus satisfying those demands at the expense of my original ideas. From now on I'll try to fit my ideas into shows instead of trying to tailor-make art for competitions. Sometimes this is necessary, when a theme is supplied, but I'll try not to spend too long working on things like that.
Back to work. Zip zip! Have a productive day folks!
