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.

I am putting on an Exhibition at the Old Fire Station Gallery in Henley.  It is called Rivers and Stone and will run from 28th March to 2nd April 2024.  The Old Fire Station is precisely that and is now a gallery space operated by the council that anyone can hire.  The space is fairly large and it is well lit with both natural and artificial lighting.  It is also well set up for art exhibitions with movable screens, hanging wires with clips, and plinths of various sizes.  The only down side being that it is a bit out of the way, behind the town hall so you can’t see it from the high street but it is central enough and well enough known that you get good foot traffic.  The gallery itself is popular and havs its own fans that basically go and see every show (there is usually something different there every week).  I have shown there before, both with a solo show in 2019 and also with the Henley Arts and Craft Guild in both their summer and winter shows.

This is the first solo show I have done for a while and partly inspired by the course I am doing at the Newlyn School of Art I am wondering what I can do differently both to drive traffic (and sales) but also to make it a more interesting artistic experience.
Firstly there is the theme.  I have done themes before but not a show at this scale.  The Old Fire Station can accommodate about 30 pictures (depending on the size and the hang). Last time I did a solo show of this size it was basically a selection of my paintings.  This time I do want to do something more themed. I have quite a few paintings that fit the theme so content is not going to be a problem.  Because I do oil painting basically anything I start now is unlikely to be a) finished or b) dry enough by March to show.   So there are paintings of rivers (the Thames, and the Lee) various Lochs in Scotland,  Standing Stones and other similar structures and I will probably put in a few still life paintings that are either directly, or indirectly linked to the theme, but what else to do?

Nelwyn Art School encourages to form links with the local community in part by getting business sponsorship.  I know I should do this and I have several organisations and businesses in mind I could approach but this is breaking new ground and it is raising up the courage to be perfectly honest.

Over and above that there are several other options.  Should I get other artists involved, if so who?  There are a number of people in the local area I admire and whose work might fit, but I kind of want to do this on my own (at least in the art stakes).  Is this foolishness?  What else?  Music, poetry, some kind of school based event?  The last one appeals but I suspect I may have left it too late. 

While the venue is quite large, it is effectively one large room so the opportunity for different areas with video, or talks etc is quite limited.  There are many possibilities that present themselves.  I think step one is get some sponsorship. If I have money that opens a number of other different possibilities.  What do you think I should do?  Pitch me some ideas?

This week talking to Mark Hatwood, former drummer of the band Mud and owner of the Harbour Gallery:  https://www.theharbourgallery.co.uk/about/


British Contemporary :  https://www.britishcontemporary.art/
American Contemporary:  https://www.americancontemporary.art/
The Artist's Handbook:  https://tinyurl.com/2vpp5hwe

At the beginning of June I was in Penzance for the end of Studio Practice group show at the Tremenheer Gallery,  part of the Tremenheer sculpture gardens.  I have written more about the gardens themselves here, and I would say again what I said there, it is highly worth visiting in its own right. There were I think about 30 exhibitors.  I had been for the duration of the course in group B and we finally got to meet group A, see their art, see their reaction to our art.  It is always an inspiring experience doing this.

The gallery itself is an odd structure.  Wooden and churchlike, it would not be out of place at the head of a Norwegian fjord. It has two floors.  The ground floor is large but intersected with wooden beams that break up the space and make for ready made individual nooks and segments. The upstairs is long and thing, rising into the triangular roof, and has a large window at one end with a spectacular view of the bay and St Michaels Mount.  There is a lot of natural light in the gallery.

Our work was hung by the course leaders Dan Pyne and Jesse Leroy.  I quite like doing this, leaving my work with other people and seeing what they do with it.  Many artists are possessive of their work at this stage, and in some contexts I definitely can be in some contexts, but not here with people I trust.  Also in a show like this, where you are exhibiting with other people, it is not just about you.  The primary focus is to hang a good show.  While it may not have your favourite  pieces in it,  having a good show overall will show you in a better light I think.  I had taken down 8 pieces.  4 still life, 1 abstract and 3 landscapes. 

This is the other thing that is interesting about show like this, other people’s perception of which of your work is good, is often different from yours. My favourite pieces of the 8 were the two weir paintings.  I could of just taken them and forced my hand but I deliberately didn’t because I wanted to see which they chose.  They chose the still life paintings.  This echoes a theme I have spoken about before in my podcast what are you making, in that my work seems to have two audiences; the art community which prefers my more out there still life work and the general public which prefers my landscapes and more straightforward paintings.

What was interesting, was not just seeing the paintings they chose, but how they hung them.  To break up the view as you entered and to divert people left or right,  an interesting tent structure was put in the entrance way.  Paintings were then grouped sort of thematically in that those with a similar energy were put together, with the work running round the room from the more vibrant, to the calmer and back again.  The eye line was also diverted.  Not just a consistent museum hang (with everything at the same level), but different sized works at different points.  Consideration was also given to sight lines so that paintings that could be seen from different parts of the room complimented or played of each other.

This was a very interesting idea to be exposed to.  The purpose of it was to arrest people’s attention, to not just have them quickly scan round the room and look at all the paintings. So eyeline was broken up by sculptures,  against the wall as well as in the room,  paintings of different size and different media, and hung at different levels.  All designed to make people pause and look again.  It was very effective and made me thing in more detail about how to hang a show.

My paintings were spread out, others had all their paintings in the same section.  One of mine greeted you as you entered which made me happy. While people were looking around the show we did a group crit and again the feedback I received echoed what I said above, that and my paintings should be framed, the next thing to tackle.

Not an original quote but one that really struck me,  it was imparted to me at Newlyn School of art but I forget the original derivation.  Its an interesting idea,  i.e. that the title of a painting (or indeed anything) can impart an extra layer of meaning onto a piece.  It is something I have been thinking about quite a lot since I heard about it.  Some titles are of course strictly functional i.e.  Haystacks at Dusk.  Or Portrait of a Society Lady.  These do add a bit of an extra layer but they are more simply labels by which to identify the painting rather than adding anything to the art itself.  Often of course these titles are not given by the artist themselves but by later collectors, museums archivists as a way of identifying the works.

You may well be thinking that this is a modern phenomenon, used for abstract and conceptual pieces (more of which later).  But I think it has a resonance before that. Sometimes of course it is to tell you what you are looking at, a mythical or religious scene (and again I suppose many of these titles were applied afterwards).
 Difficult to know if it was conscious decision but for example Turner was good at titles.  His masterpiece (and one of my favourite paintings) The Fighting Temeraire is a good example.  The painting itself if you haven’t seen it is a ghostly softly lit painting of an old sailing warship being towed by a tug.  It is being towed for scrap.  Now he could of course have called it Ship being towed for scrap, but by calling it the Fighting Temeraire it adds an extra mournful wistful quality to the painting, at least I think so.

This idea of course acquires extra significance as soon as you move into abstract and conceptual art.  And of course some artists want to avoid this imposition of an additional meaning so you get things being called Untitled (although as above they often end up being given a name),  or as in the case of Pollock, simply the date the painting was completed.  Even doing that you are saying something of course,  you are saying something about how you think the work should be regarded. There is I think a certain amount of pretentiousness about it, it smacks of self importance, or sometimes simply of laziness.  This is probably a personal bias because I like a title.  Some of them are quite poetic.

Some of them of course overcook it and become far to pretentious in their own right.). And of course some of them do cause you to re-assess the piece of work significantly. I like that sensation actually,  you see a piece of art, you see the title and then it can be like you see a different piece of art.

Last September I attended my first weekend of the Studio Practice Course at Newlyn School of Art.  My attendance had been recommended to me by Hugh Mendes, I applied earlier in the year but July was the first lesson.  I loved it from the first minute, as I suspected I would.  The first lesson was all about using different surfaces,  and it lasted all weekend.  The weekends were once every two months and focused on a different theme, paint and pigments, time spent on paintings, and scale.  

All of it building to 1st June when our end of year show opens.  Coincidentally, my birthday, so a nice birthday treat. By the time I have finished this post and put it up the show will be over.

The show took place at the Tremenheere Gallery, part of the Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens.  And I have called this blog setting the scene because it is a spectacular place that I wanted to write more about, before in a future post I talk about the show itself.

Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens are in Cornwall, about 10 minutes east of Penzance and just outside the village of Gulval.  You have to wind down a couple of single track roads (but you have to do that everywhere in Cornwall but it is well worth it.  As the title of the venue might suggest it has sculpture.  About 42 pieces I believe.  These sculptures are scattered around a large fabulous garden that stretches up the hillside from the entrance.  At the entrance is the gallery to the left, and a cafe and plant nursery to the right.

After depositing my pieces for the  show, I decided to explore and was so entranced I decided to stay for a couple of hours and sketch some of the place.  It is hard work being a piece of sculpture in this setting as you have to compete with the spectacular plants and scenery.  The way to deal with this is not to compete but to complement.
 

Forming the left hand boundary is a stream,  that pours down the hillside, forming several ponds, making mini rapids and passing under bridges.  Its banks are covered in tropical plants that thrive thanks to Cornwall's microclimate and give a rain forest feel.  It is cool and shaded here and every so often you round a corner to encounter a piece of sculpture, or a spectacular plant, or indeed both.

The path continues up quite a steep hill, the stream following you up and every so often round the corner surprising sculptures appear. One my favourites is the wall of taps you can see further up this blog.  Slightly terrifying Greek myth based sculptures also make an appearance, and a constant companion is the verdant plants.  On this path it is quite cool, the shade protects you from the sun.

As you go up the hill gantries and platforms give views of the trees below.  If you look the other way you can see the English Chanel and St Michael’s Mount.  Here, at the top of the gardens is a large round stone structure.  You go inside and it opens to an oval chamber, lined with a bench.  You can sit in there and just look up at the sky.  I highly recommend you do, and see what else the garden has to offer.

I am teaching Oil Painting at Norden Farm.  The first one is 24th May.  If you would like to sign or find out more then please go here.

The Fashion and Textile Museum is quite a small museum.  It's not really a museum as it doesn't have (as far as I can tell) any kind of permanent display.  It is more of an exhibition space.  It is located on Bermondsey Street, near London Bridge, one of my favourite spaces in London  (it contains the London Glassblowing Studio which I have blogged about before and will no doubt do again).  Until last week I had never been.

In fact before a couple of weeks ago I had never heard of Kaffe Fassett.  My partner had though.  She is an embroidery, fabrics, knitting and all things associated fiend and it was her idea to go.  I am very glad I did as it opened up a whole new world to me.  Chances are if you haven't been to the show yet, you will miss it as it closes 12th March.

So who is Kaffe Fassett.  Well he is a fabric designer.  He designs and makes extremely colourful patterned fabrics, which have a strong pattern in them.  He uses bold, unlikely colours, often in strange combination to produce something eye catching.  The fabrics are in themselves wonderful things.  However what this show, The Power of Pattern, had on display were quilts made by other people using Fassett and Fassett Co-operative fabrics.

There were some of his fabrics on display. The first room you go into, which shows an introductory video is bedecked in a red flower patterned fabric.  Throughout the exhibition the floor is decorated with a version of one of his designs.  Various stools are upholstered in his fabric and towards the end are some of Fassett's cushions and a room showing the original design drawings.

They are though not the main events.  The main event is, these amazing quilts.  They hang on the wall like harlequin war banners.  A riot of colour and shapes.  Using different Fassett fabrics in different combinations to different effects.  I know almost nothing about quilting so it was useful to have my partner show me how the stitching of the various different elements,  how the quilt stuffing was stitched in for example, was used to enhance the shapes and the designs being displayed.

Some of them were abstract geometric shapes.  The simple concentric interlocking triangles (above left) really appeals to me.  I like its simplicity but also the bold colours.  In terms of pattern it is probably the simplest in the show.  The cross shapes (above right) are a lot more complex).

Then it gets more complex still with use of circles of different coloured fabrics, some of the circles are slightly off set (above left).  It is almost an overload of colour and here is a good example of the stitching used to highlight the circular shapes.  Some of the pieces are insanely detailed (above right) and have a sort of magic eye like quality.  I looked at them expecting to see some kind of mystery revealed to me.    What adds to all this, is the gentle breeze in the exhibition space causes the quilts to move and stir. It creates a feeling and an effect that you don't often get with art.  Most art is static, or deliberately in motion.  The accidental motion appealed to me.

Not shown here but probably the star of the show was a large rectangular quilt.  Circular swatches of coloured fabrics sat against a dark blue stary background.  It looked like a constellation of planets.  The stitching was waves of shiny spider’s web like silk which added to the effect. It was wonderful.

Not all of the pieces were abstract.  Some were representational.  There was a giraffe and an elephant.  A rosy pink rhino made out of cabbage patterned fabric.  My two favourites were a face (above left) and a Cockrell (above right).  The face was difficult to see close up.  Fortunately the museum has a mezzanine level.  I like this as it allows you to look at the pieces in a different way and the face certainly benefit from being viewed further away.

Then you have a very angry Cockrell strutting through a field (above right).  He is by the same artist as did the planets quilt mentioned earlier. He has a properly furious look which I greatly appreciated.

I came away with a tea towel (the same pattern as on the floor - below).  It was a great show.  I shall be looking out similar things in the future.