LAST NIGHT SOME OF THE GREAT AND GOOD CAME AND SAW OUR FINAL SHOW.  It was very much appreciated, thanks to all who attended, some I know had come quite a way.

The show started at 5pm, at which point my large mural was still unframed. However, my noble framers, Bonds from Chesterfield, staggered down the road with the completed 8' x 4' frame and slotted the board into it as if it had been made to measure. It had of course, but since I was the one who'd done the measuring it was rather a pleasant surprise that I'd actually got my bit right. Very happy result.

Thanks to everyone involved in helping me get up and onto the walls: Jeremy Asquith and Sharlaine Fincham and  who between them started this  first whole Chesterfield Artist in Residence opportunity, and navigated through  something of a new minefield  to bring it to fruition.  Thanks To Peter who put up with me in his studio for the first three months when he didn't have room, but never compained, to Julie who allowed me to paint quietly in a corner of my new studio whilst she taught her A level students. A special thanks to Kate Penney the Level 1 tutor who so generously lent me her lovely class to play with, to  Jordan Fewell, tatooed techie who used his bandsaw to such good effect that I now want to get one myself. (A saw, not a Jordan.) Thanks also to Craig Titley and James Marples who helped get things onto walls, and then photographed them.

I have so much enjoyed this experience, both doing my own work and talking to/working with students as well. It's been a very stimulating six months, and I've got a lot more ideas stemming from the work I did here waiting to be made in my new studio. I shall miss the College. Everyone was so kind and helpful. Many, many thanks from me.

If you get a chance, look at the album with some mad students just frolicking. Who needs expensive props when you've got a piece of netting and a frame?   No wonder I had fun.

Four of us Artists in Residence, myself, Georgia Peskett, Vicki Johnson and Kate Sully, are holding our final exhibtion in The Dome at Chesterfield College from next Monday. If you are in the area, please come. The preview is 5-8pm Monday 16th April.

I have greatly enjoyed not only the opportunity to paint on a far larger scale than I can in my own studio, but also the contact with the students and staff at the College. My advice:  If you missed out this year, try again next year.

Last week I had the chance to do a workshop with a great group of students and enthusiastic staff. It was F U N for all of us.  Each student had to paint their own Olympic design on a fifty pence piece of chipboard, about a foot across.  the idea was to make three sets of rings. They flung themselves into it and the results will be on show in Queens Park Chesterfield at the Jubliee.  At the end of four hours we had three sets of Olympic rings with unique designs. Check them out on the album!

I'm moving into 3D, evolving off the board.

Chipboard begs for a jigsaw to sculpt it. Who am I to refuse?

The new studio has SUN not neon [or moon] light so I am well-chuffed.

The first two pics are nearly done. I want to get cracking on a couple of new ones soon.  They involve a jigsaw, 

or maybe a chainsaw.....

Not quite clear how that will pan out. its all milling round my head.

Possibly monochrome Things Piling up...... Things conspiring, Things gone Pearshaped.

Things will shortly Fall Into Perspective.

l8r

Empty College this week, the students in Valencia.

Painting for me is very like writing, things just happen and develop once there is a germ of an idea on the page/canvas.  With this chipboard I prefer not to plan. The coarseness of the surface has a way of overriding my own schemes anyway, and I find I like the discovery of unknown influences.

Next week I am not in Chesterfield College. Observations are being done by Outside Powers, and tensions are visibly mounting.  I shall miss the space and freedom to paint uninterrupted for two whole days : the value of having a studio away from home.

When I return I will have finally gone round all around the mulberry bush and ended up where I should have been at the start - in room W135, opposite W 137 where I am now. I feel like a cat chasing her tail.  It's a while since Ginger chased his tail. Seem to remember it was that sellotaped sardine which caused the whirling dervish episode. Sorry, no CCTV footage - more's the pity.

Couldn't resist putting a bowler hat and tie on my archetypal man last week. But no doubt it will have to go, The hat instantly takes  him from archetype to arsitype, which might be apt if it didn't also diminish the whole picture. Heigh ho.

Am pleased with the SINGING VIKING though, his harp sppears to be transforming into flight and birds, all very satisfying for him. And me.

There's an overflow of Fine Arts Students at Chesterfield Art College this year and I am taking up two bays, so this week I'll be moving to another studio at the top of the Boy's Grammar School.  Space is at a premium, and I don't help by needing so much of it. but am enjoying painting large and letting imagination rip.

 It is a well known fact that time travel in the East Midlands is an ancient tradition. But I did not know until this week that in Chesterfield college itself you can travel from one time zone to another in the space of a single building. [I have proof if you need it. Just ask.]  That kind of  anomaly is bound to create wobbles in the space-time continuum and is undoubtedly  why there was NO ONE in college this Thursday. Not a single body on my floor, or the one below. [I suppose I should be grateful for that. who likes to find bodies lying about on the floor first thing in the morning]

There was not a soul, except me

Everything piled up on tables. [Except me.]

The nationwide strike was over, but the students still missing. I definitely  blame those clocks.

A whole empty building is a ghostly affair. Very Hamelin Town after the kids have been piped off into the Weser/Thames or wherever they went - Not that I'm suggesting they are rats. I hope they found the magic mountain and none of them were left behind. But I also hope they will magically reappear next week.

Their chattering absence could explain why an uninvited man came into my mural after a long and silent day. Someone to keep me company I suppose in that echoey studio. I didn't expect him to appear, let alone disturb the calm reflective pool. But there he is poking his finger into the water, making a whirlpool, stirring up trouble. And today he's brought a horse with him. I doubt the villagers can see either of them. Their giant visitors are too vast to comprehend, Invisible tramplers, earthquake and flood-causers. Their own private weather system; unseen presences that meddle in and influence smaller lives.

Makes you think doesn't it?

Who said that?

No no no. The first draft is the simplest. It's finding the picture hidden within the woodchip that takes time, patience, and a lot of lurking about making absurd guesses, regretting, starting over.

Completing the first draft of board one, was a no brainer. The question is what comes next? Who did what to whom, and with what, at that bridge? In fact, is it a bridge at all?

I don't know, so naturally I turn to my Viking on the other board. Did I tell you about him?

Board 1, the big one, 8' x 4',  has had a picture imposed upon it, without much participation from the woodchip itself. Board 2 on the other hand is a free spirit, an artistic director [possibly dictator].  I just watch and learn.  So I asked the only thing yet to emerge upon it - the head of the viking with a big roaring mouth, 

'What are you doing on my board?' I said, out loud. 

To my surprise, when I listened I found he was singing.  And then I saw it, under his giant hands, a giant harp.... Well, I suspect it's really some kind of building he is playing as a harp, since he's a giant.

That sudden transformation, from marauder to musician was a moment of delight, a kind of visual alchemy. And that is what I am going for in both panels.

It would be simpler to work to a theme like oppression or depression, or even a title, 'What I did to my sister'.  But how much more interesting if the title is  'DISCOVER what you did to your sister'  This escalates it into an artistic whodunnit. And that is what interests me. The discovery of things not yet known that are hiding both in my mind and in the panels. The picture is only finished with a fusion of these two things, an eclectic mix of unlikely events converging onto an assuming chunk of hoarding.

Why?

For visual intrigue and entertainment.