The Vaporetto Series

These are my paintings now showing in the Figure 8 exhibition at the Myles Meehan Gallery in Darlington.


Night Travel (Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 ins.)


Photographers (Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 ins.)


Sitting on the Rail (oil on canvas, 24 x 30 ins.)


Santa Maria della Salute (OIl on canvas, 24 x 24 ins.)


Caught in the Spotlight (Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 ins.)


Dorsoduro (Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 ins.)


On the Giudecca Canal (Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 ins.)


Passing a Palazzo (Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 ins.)

Colour Room

I finished all the work for Darlington at the weekend, but decided that one of them wasn't up to scratch. Nevertheless, when we took all the paintings to the gallery on Monday morning, I found I had just the right number for the space allocated to me.

We might have spent some time arguing between ourselves over the hanging, but Julie the Curator offered to let us go for coffee while she sorted out a suggested arrangement. When we got back, she'd come up with a hanging which gives each of us a wall to ourselves, and mixes in the other pictures in blocks which work well together. I'm delighted with the look of the show and am full of admiration for Julie's abilities. She's a very confident and competent Curator.

The Private View is on Thursday evening, and as always, I'm full of excitement and trepidation, in equal parts.

The show, entitled Colour Room, opens to the public at the Myles Meehan Gallery on Friday and runs for a month.

Gnawing Doubt

Before the Run (Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 ins)

My friends from the Figure 8 painters group came round to my house yesterday and we had a meeting with the curator of a gallery in Darlington. It went very well and it looks like we have yet another promised show, possibly at the end of the year, or into the new one.

The curator had called to see some of our work, before offering us the show, and one of the pictures I brought up from the studio was this pre-Great North Run picture. I hadn't looked at it for a while and I'm having definite doubts about it now. It looks quite good reduced here on the page, but in the flesh, as it were, I can see how I might have to work on it some more. My intention with it was to stop at a newer simplicity, but now I think it may have to be brought round to something like the state of the first one I did on this subject.