A Corner Painting

In progress...

I've just been looking through some old photos on my computer and came across this piece from my second year at uni. It seems like SO long ago and the concept was based around changing the traditional method in which canvas is portrayed. As well as creating a corner canvas, I have also created a curvy canvas as seen below:

A Curvy Canvas...

The finished piece...
(although it looks slightly different now!! Mike and Sharon, this is potentially for you!!)

Homage to Franz Kline

Just thought I would post this quick!! I painted this piece during my PGCE course in a painting workshop which we could potentially teach to KS5 students. I had looked at the work of Franz Kline, a key component of the Abstract Expressionist movement in America and a personal favourite of mine. His work is highly influenced by architectural and industrial icons prominent in New York around the 1940/50's. I painted this piece with a household paintbrush and it was very freeing to work on such a large scale.

Art in Woodstock

During the October half term, I was selected to exhibit 2 of my smaller scaffolding paintings in an art festival in the market town of Woodstock, 8 miles north of Oxford. Woodstock is home to Blenheim Palace, the birth place of Sir Winston Churchill in 1874 who is now buried in the nearby Bladon churchyard. It is also said that whilst Mary I was in power, Elizabeth I was kept prisoner here when a princess in the gatehouse of Woodstock Manor for over a year as a 'precaution'.




Art in Woodstock itself is an annual visual arts festival, with over 70 artists exhibiting this year at various sites around the town. I really enjoyed this experience and it was made all the more memorable when helping one of my fellow Brookes artists set up her work I met a family from Chester who had recognised my accent. Anyone who knows me will know that this fact alone is enough to get me excited as you don't meet many people who have even heard of Chester, let alone FROM Chester around Oxford. After the whole "I KNOW HOOLE ROAD!!!"and "NOT THE RAKE AND PIKEL!!!" etc etc we started talking about schools and to cut a long story very short, they knew MY DAD!!!!!!!!!! It was so bizzare, I thought they were pulling my leg, but NO. They were not!!! It is such a small world and an experience I will never forget!!

A Painting for Helen, Tom and Baby Benjamin :)

Well with February kicking off today, I thought it was about time I posted something new on this blog! I cannot believe it was June the last time I wrote something; it has gone in the blink of an eye! Things have been moving very quickly here and with my second school placement underway, I cannot see it slowing down anytime soon. That said, I am enjoying every second and feel like I am learning something new everyday :)

I have included a painting I completed last year as a gift for some family friends. It is a lot more abstract than the previous work shown on here and also a lot more colourful! I really enjoy painting in this way and hope it looks fab in their house!!

More Images of My Work!

Now that the hype surrounding our CORE exhibition has finally subsided, I thought it would be an excellent time to post some other images of my work from the four exhibitions I have contributed to. Apart from our Degree Show and CORE exhibitions, I have also included photos from The Oxford Open and OBSESSIONS, both held at Modern Art Oxford which is the largest gallery devoted to modern and contemporary art in the South East.

I have made a simple slideshow of some of my work so far and I will continue to add to this as I produce more work. Click here to view the images. I hope you enjoy the soundtrack which I have chosen to accompany them!

CORE! What a success!

WE DID IT!!
In what seems like the blink of an eye, our London exhibition 'CORE' has drawn to a close. I don't think anyone was expecting the show to run quite as smoothly and be just as successful as it was! The whole process ran like a dream and in hindsight I don't think there is anything we would have done differently.

With set up beginning on my flatmate Poppy's birthday, we were pushed for time to fill the 2 removal vans transporting our work to from Oxford to Brick Lane and make it to London in time for her celebratory meal. All hands on deck allowed the vans to be filled with no problems at all and we enjoyed a relaxed evening in Notting Hill before the real work would begin the next day!

Wednesday brought with it a day of hard manual labor, including unpacking the vans, moving all the artwork up the stairs and into our exhibition space and generally sorting everything out!! The space itself was amazing; a cavernous old warehouse with pillars and supporting beams placed at regular intervals around the room. Brookes was to occupy just one of these rooms with 5 other Universities renting out similar spaces and exhibiting in the same week as us. Our room was the central area in the building with the other spaces dividing off contributing to the name of our show, CORE. Before arriving in London we had already organised a floor plan of exactly who had which space in the area to ensure an easy transition from our Oxford show.


We worked tirelessly so on Thursday there were only finishing touches to do and a few last pieces to be hung, before the private view that evening.

The event itself was so successful and we received a lot of positive feedback with people especially commenting on the professionalism of the exhibition. As we were located in the centre, we found a lot of visitors who had come to see other Universities exhibitions were drifting through to ours, which was fantastic help promote our show.



Overall the show was an incredible success and it has given us all the confidence to think ahead about possible shows of the future giving us the belief that we can go out there and do it all again! Maybe not just yet though... I think we deserve a little rest! :)