The Irish Embassy Expo

Hi there
Hope you had a good weekend. I had a pretty charged one as they say. The exhibition in the embassy went well and there was a pretty good turn out. For art lovers it may have been a bit difficult to commit to as there were so many other art exhibitions this last weekend. Sorry to all my friends whose exhibitions I didn't get to see.

It was great to see so many of you at the exhibition and I hope I had a chance to chat with everyone. There was pretty decent weather and the mood was good. Even a little bit of champagne flowing. This exhibition continues for a month.


So here's a photo taken on the day. This is from the left, Natalie Martin, Anna Anderson (the Irish Ambassador to France), me and Bernadette Martin.


The next exhibition is Sunday, May 23rd, in Saint-Germain-les-Corbeil (91250), 3 avenue de la Pointe Ringale, Seine et Marne. The show runs from the 23rd of May until the 1st of June and promises to be excellent. I viewed the other artists works this week and everyone's work is of a very high quality.

On the 6th of June there is the Goal Ball. It's in Hotel Concorde LaFayette, 75017 Paris. I'm exhibiting paintings in aid of the charity Goal. A commissioned portrait will be offered to the highest bidder on the evening.

More details here www.goal-ball.org/p/auction.php

Black and white paintings.

I'm doing a lot of work with black and white at the moment. Large paintings on wood and painted in acrylic. The nudes are more difficult to organise because they need a model who will pose for several hours. I find it fascinating work. Very absorbing and fantastically interesting to translate the world of colour into shades of grey.

There is a lot to learn here. It's a medium that has been ignored but it has an intense beauty and romantic feeling to it. It's definitely necessary to have a concept of the atmosphere you want to create in mind before you begin. Here are a couple of recent pieces.



The forest beside my atelier.

A mature model from the atelier of Jean Louis Morele.

I want to build these up into a series for exhibition later in the year in Paris.

Blogging about a blog

A really nice review of my work was written today by the artist and journalist Matthew Rose.
Here's what he had to say.

http://lalandedigitalpress.blogspot.com

Busy days

Busy days.
I did a marathon of painting this weekend. Saturday and Sunday with Parisian artists painting the nude. Saturday was great. I spent it with Jean Louis Morele. We were painting in his atelier and discussing different mediums. He's a magnificent oil painting artist but also very passionate about watercolours. We meet again next Saturday. It should be good. A couple of other artists will be there for a session of work lasting about five hours. It's more economical to hire an artist together and share the work space. We also enjoy one anothers company. Great discussions take place during the breaks. This is an acrylic which I did on Saturday.


Sunday was with Agnieszka Pado, drawing for five hours. These are tough intense sessions. The models are very brave.

We had an artist friend from England staying with us too. Irma Irsara arrived on Tuesday last week, till Sunday. She was exhibiting in the Bastile, Grand Marche de la Art Contemporain. She did very well, attracting the attention of a lot of galleries, artists and collectors. Sold quiet a lot of work too. So shes definitatly going to be staying with us again next year.

This is one of the paintings which will be at the Irish Embassy exhibition on the 16th of May. This particular painting took almost a month to complete. It's extremely symbolic with lots of layers of meaning. It's title is Trinity Chalice.