SELF PORTRAIT
ANDY HAMILTON
Sorry it has been a while since I last logged on, it’s been a busy year. Here are 2 new pictures which I’ve done for a show in Austrailia in December, more info to follow.
The portrait of Andy Hamilton, the late saxaphone player from Birmingham is painted in acrylic on board and is 82cm x 53cm. I liked the way the top of his saxaphone contoured around like he was a snake charmner and this instrument was a snake.
The second image is quite an intense self portrait with chiaro scuro lighting. It’s a drawing in charcoal and is 84cm x 67cm. I think sometimes the use of black space adds to the stmosphere. I love the idea of doing self portraits, in the spirit of Rembrandt, I try to do at least one a year.
December 2nd, 2012
I saw on the local TV news a few weeks ago that the Birmingham based Jazz legend Andy Hamilton died which I was very sad to hear. I think he was about 94 tears old. I’ll never forget the entrance that he mad when I went to his house for the first sitting with him, gliding down his stair lift with a sharp, pin striped suit and trilby, holding his sax and looking every part the legend that he was. More pictures of Andy to come…
June 17th, 2012
Anne and me spent a long Bank Holiday weekend doing a mural for Scarlett’s room, It’s difficult to know what she’s into at 6 months old so when our friends, Nige and Lauren, sent a Cornish picture for her we thought that would be a great theme because we go there a lot. She looks pretty dwarfed infront of the mural but she’ll grow into it.
June 17th, 2012
A German TV company approached me and a few of the other artists from Plus One to do a show for them on Photorealism. The show is called Galileo and I understand from the producer that it is a German version of The South Bank Show but a bit more populist, so maybe with a bit of The One Show thrown in too. I recorded it a few weeks ago at the gallery in Chelsea and the background was mocked up to look like an artists studio. I was basically doing a lot of talking and they filmed me painting a little segment of a painting which I was working on. I think my painting of Ray, the floating tattooed man is also a big feature of the show. I think it’s going to be broadcast over the next few weeks.
June 17th, 2012
It’s a busy time at the moment, I working my way through a series of commissions and I’ve got these exhibitions in the pipeline.
1. The Frissiras Museum in Athens currently have a large exhibition of works in their collection on at the moment and my painting “Pretending to Be Jesus” is in the show. There’s a huge thick catalogue to accompany the show which would have gone a long way to paying off Greece’s national debt had the funds been invested that way. If you’re in Athens, ( an interesting place at the moment) the exhibition runs until 30th September.
2. I will be exhibiting my portrait of Eric Sykes at the annual Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition at the Mall Galleries. Off the top of my head I think it opens on 2nd May for about two weeks.
3. Also in May The New Art Gallery, Walsall are shoing my very first public commission which I did in 1994. It was called Les and Ernie and featured two pigeon racers from Walsall. It seems like a lifetime ago now when I did that but I still like it. It’s in a different style than my realist work. When I did my MA I was really interested in Stanley Spencer and it’s really influenced by his style. The Exhibition starts in May.
4. I’m showing some work in Melbourne at the Metro Gallery with some of the artists from Plus One Gallery. It’s a showcase of British Realism. This show opens in October.
5. I don’t want to say too much about the final show at the moment because it’s still being put together but it’s in October at a major public contemporary art gallery in Prague. It’s a survey of contemporary British painting with some pretty heavy weight artists so I was very flattered to have been asked to exhibit in the show. More later…
April 23rd, 2012
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/who-needs-a-camera-artists-create-766729
Here’sa recent article from The Mirror about the gallery that I show with in London, Plus One. I thinkk the Daily mail printed it first then it was picked up by ther mirror, then TV and newsapers all over the world. It’s quite amazing how one article can generate so much momentum these days, As a result there have been queues outside the gallery and hundreds of people have ben visiting each day. Quite incredible.
April 23rd, 2012
Anne and myself went to the private view of the new Freud exhibition last Tuesday evening at the NPG. I’d been looking forward to it for months and it was even better than I had hoped for. We got there early so that we cou;ld have a quiet look around and for the first 15 minutes it was a very “private” view which was lovely. It’s got basically everything , form his very early work in the 40’s to the last, poignantly unfinished painting that he made in 2011. It’s the best exhibition I’ve been to in the past 10 years I’d say. It made me realise just how powerful and emotive an exhibition created from the human hand and touch can be. So often I go to public art gallery shows which are full of piss boring video loops and “witty” / ironic installations which just leave me cold, as emotionally engaging as a visit to DFS or B&Q. Freud’s show felt real, important, serious, ambitious, demanding, energetic, physical. From this show I think the work he did in the 50’s and 90’s are the most triumphant, his large eyed paintings of Kitty and his huge paintings of Leigh Bowery in the 90’s. Quite incredible. Other artists that I know were at the show including Tai-Shan Schierenberg, Ishbel Myerscough, Stuart Pearson Wright, Mike Gaskell
and myself and I think it’s fair to say that Freuds influence has touched us all in our work as he has hundreds of other artists, he is truely a giant of Britishfigurative art and this show really points that out. There’s a great catalogue to accompany the show too , beautifully illustrated. well woth a visit if you’re in London. runs until the end of May
February 22nd, 2012
I mentioned in an earlier post that I visited Eric Sykes at his London office in Bayswater at the tail end of last summer and spent a wonderful day with him. Here is the first drawing that I have done of him. It’s on a beautiful qulity and quite expensive A1 size paper with a nice deckel edge on all sides and a water mark which I love. It has a certain texture to t too whch I have used to my advantage in the drawing. I enjoyed the scale of this drawing, I usually like to work at 3/4 of life size when I’m painting but drawing materials are more clumsey I find so it’s nice to work a bit bigger and there was so much detail to pack in.
I thought I’d draw him smiling because he is a comedian and comedy writer , an expression I rarely use but felt was relevant in this instance and I haveto say I’m really pleased with it.
February 13th, 2012
A friend of min from Walsall has been chipping away at songwriting for years with varying success but has remained dogged to the belief in his work which is entirely admirable. Here’s his new single which I think is great and has an incredibly ear worm hook. Me and my brother in law Mike are in the video in a pub in Walsall. click on the link.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDtIaKo4YIw
February 13th, 2012
Since we had Scarlett we’ve been playing some chilled out sounds to keep everything nice and calm and I got this beautiful album by The Civil Wars which is the perfect backdrop for a baby if you want to relax, we’ve played it to death. I saw them on Jools Holland and got the album straight after. I know it’s a bit late but a friend of ours brought another beautifully chilled out Christmas album by Sufjan Stevens, it’s a 5 disc set that he worked on annually for 5 years and is a very low fi bedroom studio but is a must for next Christmas.
February 13th, 2012
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