Oren’s art could easily and to a certain extent rightly called about identity, change, the discovery of the self and one’s place in the world.  And while there is a truth in all this, if that is where you stop then you are selling both the art and the artist short.  It is about more than that, and I think, these surface level descriptions hide what it is really about or what is really going on.

Let’s start with the basics shall we.  Oren produce short films,  spoken word or performance pieces, and ceramic objects.  These three often intermingle with each other or our specifically designed to play of each other.  They are experiential in that you benefit from spending time with and interacting with them but also you will enjoy them more if you are the kind of person who uses words like experiential.  

I say this because Oren’s work is often very funny.  At least I think so.  Amongst his ceramic pieces are casts of his nipples.  Nuddity features in his films and while this is sensual and evocative and am also left with the short that he is saying Ha! You say my (and his partner’s) bottom.  Possibly I think this because I am incredibly childish but I don’t think so as there is a gorgeous playfulness in Oren’s work.  It is celebrating where we live, the power and purpose we get from places and how we interact with them and the joy of being alive.  And the strangeness of the world and the great mysteries that there are to be explored. 

It's a fun and interesting place to be Oren’s world and his art invites you in.  Go, go in and enjoy it.

On a recent trip to London I popped into the National Portrait Gallery and while I was there took theopportunity to go round the Herbet Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024.  This was previously called the BP portrait award but there is a change of sponsor now.  It is on until October 2024 and if you are at all interested in contemporary portraiture I would highly recommend you go.  It is not a vast show, occupying one room with maybe 20 paintings in all.  The quality, as every is very high and I have selected here the ones that, for various reasons stood out for me.

The first one I've pictured is called "A Moment" and is by Dawn Beclkes. It is a self portrait (as in fact are a few of the ones I've select). It is one of the pieces the gallery used to publicise the show and it is easy to see why, because with its vibrant, even slightly clashing colours, it is a very eye catching work. I am not actually sure I like it, but I keep looking at it and keep coming back to it.  It is odd, the colours as mentioned, but also the downward slightly diffident gaze of the figure.  And the number?  That is a great device that both shouts at you and draws you in.

The second picture, I really liked.  It made me smile.  It is very warm and intimate and loving.  You look at it and you instantly feel that you know the man in the painting, that you like him (love him in fact) and want to spend time in his company.  The warm glow of the colours , in the domestic setting, particularly the orange in the background give a homely feel.  As does of course pose and the action of the figure. Then you look at the title.  This is, for me anyway,  one of those pieces where the title changes how you feel about the painting.  It is called "The Last Portrait" by Sasha Sokolva. It is, as the title suggest, the last portrait she did of her grandfather.  Completed in fact after he died.  The fact he is mostly in shadow perhaps hints at this but once you know this the picture takes on a feeling of gentle, loving, melancholy.  It is a wonderful piece and the photo-realistic level of detail is staggering.

A slight criticism on framing.  I think Inbar's painting is a little lost in that massive floating frame. Possibly that is intentional but it doesn’t work for me.  I think just the discrete light wood of the inner frame would have been enough.  I like this painting, it has vulnerability to it and reminds me a little of a renaissance mythic figure.  I also like the mottled treatment of the figure and the way he is cut off by the internal framing. It makes you feel like you are right up close to him.

Lewis' painting is much more formal.  It has a power an prestige to it, no doubt intentional and drawing from renaissance/enlightenment era portraiture.  You could easily see this alongside a series of Florentine nobles.  The fact that the figure is a black woman does add to this, as by the nature of the figure it subverts (or enhances) the tradition on which it is drawing.  She is also a very striking figure.  This leads me onto something that is interesting in portraiture.  For me part of whether I respond to a portrait is whether I am drawn to or like or feel empathy for the sitter.  If for some reason I take against the sitter then I find it difficult to engage with the painting and while I can often appreciate its technical expertise it would resound with me in the way other portraits will.

I suppose all paintings have this.  If you don't respond to the subject matter then the painting is, on some level, not going to work for you.  I think this tendency is enhanced in portraiture thought because you are looking at a person.  No doubt our prejudices, both known and unconscious, play a large part in this.

Moving on to something very different.  The only nude in my selection (and I believe the only one in the show).  This piece called "Jaqueline with Still Life" by Antony Williams won the first prize.  I am not sure it would have been my first choice but I can see why it won.  Firstly it is quite odd.  The pose, and the position of the figure is odd and unusual. It is a sort of domestic setting. The still life selection is also odd, a selection of children's toys. And why the fan?  It is painting that invites questions but without being too pretentious or overly intellectual.
 
Williams works with the model shown a lot and there does seem to be an ease and a familiarity to the painting of her.  Also she looks slightly bored by the whole thing (at least I think so) which I found amusing. The rendering of the whole thing wish this sort of mottle pastel shading gives a subtlety, which is in tension with the subject matter. I particularly like the way the pillow is done.  The whole thing reminds me slightly of Paul Nash (of who I am a bit fan).

I cannot now recall if there were other works in the show with more than one figure.  I do not believe so but this painting I really like. It is I think my favourite and were I to be awarding the prize.  It would have won. It is called "The Brambles" and is by Lewis Hazlewood-Horner. The blues are inciting, standing out boldly from the rest of the composition. It is the way that the picture captures the swirling motion of the potter, the sense of frantic motions, contrasting with the still figure calmly painting to the right and the sense of serene concentration on both their faces.

Moving on to two striking portraits. The first one (above left) has the slightly baffling title of "I Am because You are" by Ashley Ogilvy.  I have to say I don't understand the title and it does somehow take away from the portrait. The garments and the objects on display give us some sense of the identity and the interests of the sitter.  I like the way he sort of emerges out of the vague blurred bottom of the painting and his tilted quizzical, relaxed gaze. What really lifts it for me though is the shiny, blotted and blurred silvery background. It really frames the sitter.

Very different is "Estuary English" by Ray Richardson (above right). It has a natural dynamism with the figure looming out towards you. The way he has his hands in his pockets and the clothing adds to this sense of naturalism and gives you a real feeling that it is a cold blustery day. It is almost like you've interrupted a conversation between the figure and the artist.  The setting adds to this sensation with the oars (at least I think they are oars) and the metal guides leading the eye past the figure into the background of the picture.

Another strident figure who comes out of the canvas at you is Ruth Fitton's "Onward: Self-Portrait from Life" (above). It is a really great picture and I think my second favourite in the show. Well titled as well, the pose says, here I am and here I stand and the determination of the stance is at nice contrast with the soft, almost out of focus style of the painting. I particularly like the little details like the photo of the portrait peaking out from under the sofa. The warm light in the background is also a good touch as it draws you further into the portrait.

"After Image" by Kyle Hackett (above) is in someways a very formal, almost cliched composition, looking like a graduation photo in some respect.  The monochrome depiction of the subject and the subdued nature of the composition in general gives an almost ghost like quality.  This is a deliberate choice, Hacket is making a deliberate , political statement which I think is obvious in the piece and gives a punch to the work.

Much more ghostlike, in fact elegiac in quality is Monument 3 by Nathan Ford (above). It is beautiful and mournful and speaks of loss and it is therefore unsurprising that is a painting of the artists father, completed several years after his death. This captured very well by the way the figure is fading away, disappearing into the white background.

Its a great show and you until 11th October 2024 to go and see it.

The week leading up to the show was a quite frantic set up, of which I was only tangentially involved.  There were several complex elements that had to be assembled, more of which later, but by 17:00 on Friday it was all up and the Private view began.  This was when most (but by no means all) of the visitors arrived, at least in the most condensed numbers.  It is also when most of the sales took place.  A small swarm of visitors, friends, families, local residents, fans of the gallery and fans of the Newlyn School of Art shows turned and  wondered around.  I was very chuffed to sell a piece the small black and white one you can see in the view top left.   The private view is fun but also tiring and quite intense.  You meet and talk to so many people. 

Let start about talking about me shall we?

It is an interesting experience having your pieces up in a show, particularly a group show.  As I discussed in the latest episode of my podcast with Mala Hassett you go through phases of being proud of your work and enjoying seeing it up, to feeling that it is not good enough and everyone else is better, and back again.  This carry's on throughout the weekend.  Now looking back at the show and having a bit of distance I am proud of them and do think they stack up.

It would take an age to go through everyone else in detail and talk about their work.  Broadly speaking we all had a little nook of the gallery in which our work was hung but then it also appeared elsewhere throughout the gallery.  Tremenheere is interesting in that the big wooden beams partition up the downstairs space.  The upstairs is, as you will see, much more open.

 Three of my co-exhibitors had installation spaces formed by these wooden beams,  Oren had a cosy little nook cut off from the main space by strategically placed duvets.  Inside was series of cushion from which you could watch his film.  Sheelagh had a similar space divided up with diaphanous hangings and inside a mock up of her work bench with casting of various tools. Anthony had a large pieces of paper on which visitors were encouraged to draw.  By the end of the show it was replete with a larger number of drawings of various kind (above right).  The rest of us  had on this floor more classical displays of paintings hung on the wall, or sculptures mounted in various places.  A couple of the later of these (one by James Cross, one by Felicity Fletcher) escaped outside. Felicity's sculpture was a large bronze Verdigris egg. small children, convinced it had a dinosaur in it kept on trying to roll it down the hill and had to be stopped.

In the back room though was set up Connor’s wonderous machine.  A series of tubes,  you put a ping pong ball into a tube and one pops up from another tube somewhere behind you or next to you, depending on where you added them.  The idea was you write something on one of the balls and receive another message from the ball that pops out. This was a big hit and it was delightful thing when you explained to people who were just observing that they could interact and how, and see the joy appear on their faces as they did so.

Upstairs was dominated by Lizzie Stevens' bamboo studio, displaying here bowls.  It occasionaly gave way in the heat and had to be persuaded up again.  It was set off wonderfully by the art on display, in this well let, church like but more open space. 

Manning a show like this is quite an intense experience.  You meet so many people.  People interested in your art, in the art of your peers.  People you know, people you don't.  At one point a coachload of kids turned up from a school near where I live and who knew someone I knew. Quite a coincidence.  There were also tutorials, one on how to present yourself as an artist, one on how to write your art statement (you can see mine here).

It was a wondersful show and a great experience.  I enjoyed it greatly but came away elated and exhausted and I am not quite sure I have yet recovered.

Do you know who the Expressionists are?  I have to say that prior to this show I did only vaguely.  If I really thought about it I might have come up with Kandinsky but probably I would have been confused with the later American Abstract Expressionists.  That very good show at Tate Modern allowed me to fill this hole in my  knowledge and fill it with a series of wonderful paintings and incredible artists, many of whom I hadn't heard of before.

The Expressionists were primarily but not wholly focused around Munich in a group known as the Blue Rider.  Their star (and I think he is this) and one you will almost certainly have heard of before is Kandinsky.  In the later part of the exhibition his large, colourful swirling paintings dominate the show (above).  They are incredibly eye catching and I like them very much.  There is a reason he is as famous as he is.  What the show also does very well is chart his progress to this point, show the other artists in the group and the influence they had on him and their own development.

 One of these was the fantastically named Marianne Werefkin.  She produces these slightly soulful almost melancholy paintings, often with a strong narrative and this painting (above left) called Into the Night is one such example.  I like the 3 focal points, the departing figures, the person in the doorway surrounded by warm orange light, and the distant white building at the end of the blue passageway.  It made me think of Terry Pratchett's Discworld but then most things do.  There is a strong narrative here so as well as admiring the painting and the swirling brush strokes you get caught up wondering what is going on and constructing your own story.

I have paired this with a very different street scene,  an early Kandinsky in fact (above right). I love views like this and often paint (or try to) similar things.  In someways its quite dull, just a pathway down a wall but I like the blobbyness of the background and the strong white wall at the front.  You can see just how far his later paintings (at the top) are from this.  Unlike the Werefkin painting instead of viewing a scene you feel like you are in the scene which is something I like.

Then we go back to Werefkin.  It is fairly well known that many of the impressionists were obsessed by Japanese woodblock prints and I am willing to bet money that Werefkin was too as this definitely has Hokusai views of Mount Fuji vibes.  Although of course the colour schemes are much more vibrant and having the orange sit on top of the blue. Then the figure and the strange house (church) mess with the perspective.  It is a strong painting and I think my favourite from the whole show.  I kept coming back to it.

Another painter I had not heard of was Lyonel Feringer.  The painting pictured (above left) has the rather unlikely title of Gelmorda II. I heard someone commenting about how it reminded them of the recent Dune films and they are exactly right.  Small figures and vast vaulting spaces made more stark by the geometric lines and the austere cold colour scheme.

Also you know what I said about the development of Kandinsky well in my short samples I have taken you back in time to one of his early paintings (above right).  I like this in it's own right.  Blobby colour that takes you into the painting and industrial looking buildings at the back.  It is though very interesting to scan back up to the top of the post and see the change from this one to those.

Next we have two very different paintings of the same subject matter, in this case portraits of Werefkin.  The first one (top left) is a self portrait.  She does not look happy in it, her eyes glowing red very severe and surrounded by colour.  You could spend hours and pages drawing phycological conclusions on this one and I am sure that people have.

The one next to it is happier and more flattering and is by Munter. It glows and smiles at you and I love the golden background.  This was another of my favourite paintings and again one that kept on drawing me to it. It's almost a mountain landscape with a head on top.  The triangular shape leading you up to the face.  And the colours in the clothes, and the background are not just blocks,  they are complex and mottled.  I like it very much.

It is a very good show and I highly suggest you go and see it.  It is on until October 2024 at Tate Modern. I shall sign off with this fine picture by Werefkin (below) of people mourning a ship wreck.

Episode 18 of the The things that Drive us is out.  Listen to it on the link below.

It is art show season here in Oxfordshire.  I will be going to much of it and for last bank holiday weekend was Henley Arts Trail.  I have exhibited in this in the past but this time I decided not to, so I could attend as a visitor and take it all it. This is a brief summary of some of my stars.  Not pictured but worth a mention is Si Sapsford who displayed a number of excellent and very intriguing paintings and ceramics. She was exhibiting on her own, out of her studio and I do like seeing an artists studio.  So that was good.

Then next was the Henley Arts and Craft Guild (of which I used to be a member) displaying at the Old Fire Station Gallery where I recently exhibited.  It was very well curated this year.  It is always challenging hanging such a large group show and having a crowded wall is unavoidable. Within this restrictions it had been hung very well and there were a number of things I really liked.  

Sarah Pye, who I know a bit,  is an established and successful artist who paints mainly large colourful rural scenes in Acrylic.  It was therefore a very pleasant surprise to see this striking, slightly grungy and threatening painting of Henley Bridge.  I hope she does more like this.

Very intriguing indeed was the work by Janet Watson (above left). who does these skin graft like pieces made of ceramics, embroidery and silk.  They have a slightly disturbing organic quality but the colour choice and general composition makes it strong, I think.

Next up is Katy Garrod (above top right) who paints in acrylic but breaks up and elevates (I think in any event) the composition with collage.  Below this is Jenny Lee's "Element".  Sometimes, if they are done well I love these scratchy, brown and black abstract compositions.  And I like this one.

Lastly at the Old Fire Station Gallery, at least of my selections is Barry Wall's Green Dish (above).  I love ceramics,  particularly ceramics with this internal lustre and the two town glowing gem like blue really appeals to me and is set off by the green very nicely.

I do have a fondness for ceramics and so I was sorely tempted by these salt bowls (above left) on display in the Jacobini gallery and produced by Rhian Winsalde. They have a lovely lustrous interior with a salty looking roundel at the bottom which contrasts nicely with the white ceramic itself.  Each one is matched with an individual spoon which I appreciate.

Onto sculpture.  The Oxford Sculpture group always produces a good show.  Previously they were at Greys Court but this year they were at the Leander Club which displayed them to good effect.  There was a large selection varying to small and affordable to large and not. Daren Greenhow  produces some of the affordable end.  I have seen his stuff before and I greatly enjoy them.  These two owls (above left) show perfectly his skill and his appeal.  They are charming and interesting and I like the steam punk aesthetic.

Lilly Henry similarly and in this case produced this delightful Puffin sculpture (above right).  She is a talented sculptor as she also produced some of the larger works on display which were very striking.

My favourite venue was Oaken Grove Vineyard, although I will admit to bias as it is run by an old school friend of mine.  Having these sculpture scattered around the vines was very effective and encouraged you to wonder around to discover them.  I have said this before but wine and art work very well together.  They, and the rural venue all fed of each other so you had a large number of visitors with the wine encouraging purchase of the art and vice versa.

Bronwen Coussens is someone I know and whose work I admire.  She produces very fine ceramics and these blue and white ceramics pieces are a good example of her work (above left).  I was also taken with these spiky and knobbly pieces produced by Anne Marie Chiasson (above left).  I like the shape, the way the colour deepens as the piece descends and the golden metal.

I shall leave it there.  I was a good trail.  I might take part next year.

This time one of the hooks for the show was that they had displayed some of the paintings with the outfits (or parts of the outfit) next to it.  In some cases, like the above sumptuous dresses, or in other cases fans, or hats or similar.  Sargent, as well as being very good at people is a master of displaying fabric or clothing and part of how he painted people was choosing what they were wearing, and how they were posed.  Staging it, if you will.  So as you enter the show you are greeted with a black dress next to the portrait of the woman who wore it and you get to admire just how accurately he painted them.  While I admired the clothing and the skill in which they were made I much preferred the paintings and the clothes look better in the painting.  As with the portraits in general they glow.

One of the issues with portrait shows and reacting to the paintings is that there is quality and skill of the painting but also the sitter. If for some reason I don’t like or are not drawn to the sitter then I don’t really like the painting.  I often wonder to what extent this is because the painter did not like them either.  So there were a number of paintings of vaguely military men, or the Sassoon family which I did not like because I took against the subject.

In the second room there was a very striking woman in a simple, but elegant black dress.  It seems no coincidence that many of the sitters are good looking women.  There are some exceptions of course.  The way in which Sargent renders the folds and lines of the dress, set off by her alabaster skin.  It does look like something out of fashion magazine.  What I did like seeing though was a version of the painting that was unfinished and so it would seem that Sargent does the figures before the background. On his background, they are never just one colour, but mottled. 

The paintings I was most drawn too were that of women with their children.  They were intimate but also seemed to show some kind of maternal strength which I liked seeing.  The one of the woman of the right particularly seems to be saying if you come near my children I’ll swear I’ll do time. The children are all depicted as sweet and vulnerable and again in these sumptuous outfits.  These pictures also show how Sargeant is adept are depicting interiors and furniture, deep reds of wood and the shine of gilt.

These paintings again show Sargeant’s ability to depict pleats and folds of clothing. But what particularly impressed me is how he depicted organza, translucent type material, with whatever is underneath, and arm or other clothing is underneath showing through.  I studied these for a while to try and think how he did it.  With difficulty was my only conclusion.

There were some men in appearance.  The painting on the left, the Duke of Ponzi (possibly not Ponzi, I can’t read my own notes) at home,  is one I have seen before.  I very handsome and striking fellow in an amazing outfit, particularly his slippers and I would love to have the fashion sense and self confidence to wear something and present myself like that. The contrasting red gives a sumptuous devil like feeling.  How I actually feel though is like the gentleman on the right with his disheveled appearance.  I think it is interesting that he was painted by Sargeant.  The disdain for his appearance and the holding of the piece of paper also shows an intellectualism that I aspire too, in a difference way.  As with all good portrait painters there is a definite feeling of the character in there.  You feel that you are in their presence.

Not all the paintings are of society people, although most are.  One of my favourites is this golden number of a Spanish dancer.  You can tell that’s what she is from across the room by her stance, and her attitude.  You can picture her hammering out a flamenco number and indeed that is what she was famous for.  They have her dress on display too, a sumptuous affair with very fine needle work.

Not all the paintings are of society people, although most are.  One of my favourites is this golden number of a Spanish dancer.  You can tell that’s what she is from across the room by her stance, and her attitude.  You can picture her hammering out a flamenco number and indeed that is what she was famous for.  They have her dress on display too, a sumptuous affair with very fine needle work.

We return to glamorous women now and again we see Sargeant’s mastery of painting fabrics. The painting on the left is the sexiest painting in the display.  She is the only subject who I read as having what might be determined an alluring look. Most, if not all of the other sitters are either upright or leaning forward.  She is the only one learning back. And again we see another of Sergeant’s trick with, like the Duke with his reds, we see blues and purples, similar colours but different shades playing off each other.   Then on the right we have this standing woman.  I like her smile like she has heard a joke or seen something that has amused her.  And then after a while of looking you see what it is.  Can you see it?  It is the small dog on the bottom left pulling at her dress.  I love this.  Including it is very funny and makes the picture a masterpiece, and one of my favourites.

My exhibition, River and Stone, has finished so I thought I would write up what happened,  what went well, what could have gone better and what I do differently next time.

The show ran from Thursday 28th March to 2nd April a the Old Fire Station Gallery in Henley on Thames.  You can hire the gallery in weekly blocks (Wednesday to Tuesday).  I had booked I way back in February 2023 and gone for Easter 2024 (2023 was already booked).  I chose Easter because I last did a show at the Old Fire Station Gallery in Easter 2019 and attendance had been good.  One of the errors I made was that Easter is a moveable feast and East in 2019 was later in the year, was not during half term and the weather was better.  I had failed to take this into account.

Statistics.  Attendance 97 people (plus 6 poets – so 103).  Some of the people attendance twice on more than one day.  Sales: £56 in cards, £350 in paintings.  I am not sure the paintings count because they were bought by the same family member. 

This leads me to my main thing I would do differently next time.  I think to sell the paintings themselves I priced them about £50 or £100 too high.  For a pop-up show, unless you are an established name, if you actually want to sale the paintings then you need to have the paintings at such a price that they can be an impulse purchase (my paintings in 2019 were much cheaper and I sold 18 of them 18 of them).   

One thing that had been a problem is that I was very ill in the run up to the show.  I had a severe chest infection for a number of weeks and had some doubt as to weather I would be well enough to do the show at all. This doubt (and the fact I wasn’t well enough to do anything) meant I did not do things like preparing prints, or advertising the show as vigorously as I would have done otherwise.  It wasn’t until the week before the show that I had finally recovered that I started to publicise it in earnest, and arguably it was too later. 

As to publicity , I of course publicized it on social media (and got a fair amount of traction and some people did attend because of this. I also produced fliers.  On fliering,  the fliers did server well to tell people who knew me, or about my art, about the show and prompt them to come.  I think only 2 people who I didn’t already know came because of fliers.  If I were to do it again, I would flier more targeted but also get fliers and posters up in shops and around town. I would try to get some shops involved in some fashion, by sponsorship say so that they had a reason to tell people to go to the show. The Old Fire Station Gallery is a bit off the main drag, hidden from the main part of town from the Town Hall and so passing trade and foot fall is limited for that reason. 

The plus side of it as a venue is that it is cheap (particularly if you are a Henley resident, you get a discount) and it has a small or dedicated number of fans who basically come to every show.  I think I had about 8 of these appear and had a number of really nice discussions with people about art etc.

What I did attempt to get more interest in the show was to get another organization involved.  In this case the lovely people from Two Rivers Press who came along on Thursday afternoon to read poetry.  They generated I think 6 extra attendees (not including the poets themselves).  Attendance was disappointing in part because the weather was truly dire on Thursday, with hammering rain. Also people were avoiding travelling if they didn’t have to because of the pre-Easter rush and because I didn’t advertise it as well as I could have done.  Still it was worth ago and I’m glad I did it because I made some connections and got to know some lovely people who I will probably collaborate with again.

This, for me was the main benefit of the show.  I met some really nice people and in some cases re-met some people I hadn’t seen for a long time.

On attendance.  On Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday only 1 person attended before 12:00 and attendance dropped over every day after 15:00.  In one sense you might as well open for as long as you can because you can only hire the venue in weekly blocks but it is slightly dispiriting to sit in a gallery for a couple of hours while no one comes in.
This brings me on to what else I would do differently . I would organize activities like an improtu still-life drawing class. Or have an activity people could get involved in (like adding drawings to a growing wall or something).  Because of illness I did not organize a private view and I think this was a mistake.  A private view in an evening is more likely to drive people in, particularly if you are offering booze and perhaps music.  I also think I won’t do a show like this on my own again (unless it is organized and put on by a gallery or something similar).  I think I would want to collaborate with someone else.

What did go well though was the hang of the show.  I was vey proud of how I hung the show, incoproating some of the lessons from Newlyn School of Art, such as disrupting the sky line.  So I had works you could only see from outside,  one of which referred to works inside.  I had works at different heights.  I had works hung on plinths rather than on the wall.  You couldn’t see all the works from all points in the room so you had to go round and explore.  I had sections which were themed and sections which were mixed.  Some of the paintings were still life of rocks so I got the rocks in question and put them round the room.  I think it looked good and I enjoyed seeing my works up in a well lit space.

It was interesting too seeing what people reacted too, with different people liking different thing.  Probably the most praised painting was Marsh Lock, but the other one , to my surprise was dancers around the Tomb of the Grey She Wolf (both below). 

So I have come away with a number of ideas.  But it has been exhausting so I am spending today in bed recovering.

This week I talk to Scotland based poet Caroline Johnstone about her poetry practice and related themes, like how much of what people interpet in an artists work is actually intended.
Caroline can be found on Instagram:  @carolinejohnstonewrites
Twitter: @carolinejohnstonewrites  Facebook: @daretobehappier

The book she mentions will be published at Hedgehog Poetry @HedgehogPoetry

Caroline is also the resident poet at Dundonald Castle - https://dundonaldcastle.org.uk/ and on the board of The Federation of Writers (Scotland) - https://www.federationofwriters.scot/board 


As for me I have an exhibition coming up in March in Henley-on-Thames.  Details will follow soon.