10/11/2012

Taking a Break

After the solo show at Octavia View I felt the need to take a bit of a break. It's surprising how much admin you can fall behind with when working 60-70 hour weeks, and after producing so many paintings I was in need of time out and reflection from creating new artwork.

Not that I haven't been busy, my new job was and continues to be challenging and I've been busy working on my Sketchbook for the 2013 Sketchbook Project. This is almost finished and it might actually be the biggest artwork I've ever made. It's a bit different from the rest of my work and not very deep with concept but I was going for challenging scale rather than challenging concept. Of course the point of the Sketchbook project is to do something different from your usual work but more on that another day.

Unfortunately some things did fall by the wayside. 2012's photographic project on Flickr started to suffer from a lack of time invested into it and the results became so erratic and samey (really how many photographs of flowers and plant from ground level up could I do) that I let it die an early death. I still think it has possibilities, it just needed a bit more thought and time on a daily basis which I couldn't offer. Saying that I've not been stinting the photography, I just had to go back to basics a little, experimenting and getting accustomed to my new camera. Finally after years of saving I bought myself a DSLR and it's a revelation as to what can be done. The level of control over the image is so much greater than compact cameras.

I've also been away on a couple of trips, first to the Isle of Wight in August and then to Dublin in October which gave me lots of practice and inspiration for new paintings. Below is a selection of photos from both. Finally I'm planning on starting a weekly blog entry on a project you might have heard about a few blog entries ago.

Isle of Wight



Dublin