Reasons to be cheerful

Today I went to collect the frames for my December exhibition. The framer did a marvelous job and very fast too. They look great.

After that I went to an exhibition in Baillencourt sur Essonne. It's not a high quality exhibiton, just a local thing but lots of good artists come from all over france to be in it. Certainly it has some good quality work on show.

I got an invitation to a very cool exhibition in Paris on the Champs Elysses next week. Looking forward to that.

Sent off promotional material for the next exhibition in December.

Invited some other artists to show their work in Ireland with a gallery that I work with.

And now I can't sleep because I'm thinking about the show, in two weeks, so, I'm going to do the most creative ironing I can, at 3am :)

Plein air, sketching, exhibition

Hey, been doing lots of things on the qt. Yesterday, thanks to an artist friend who looked after the gallery, I was able to go out and join some others at Fontainbleau for Pleine Air Painting. It was really a great day. Well worth taking the time out for. I'm a little ill with a cold as a result because it was freezing but I'm still very glad I went.

Here are a couple of photos.

I've also been doing a lot of sketching on the metro in Paris. The portraits above are of people I've seen on the train recently. It's a nice way to spend a voyage. I might take a day out just to do that, particularly on longer journeys, perhaps to CDG airport etc.

There's an exhibition coming up. Yes, my own work at last, rather than other peoples. It's in Style Pixie gallery. A great, off the beaten track gallery which I really like. It has an underground feel to it. The curator is great and the directress is very inspiring.

Tadelakt and Flood

I just finished a course in Tadelakt which took place in the hills around Maubec, south of France. It was an excellent course, taught by a Moroccan decorator named Jamal Daddis, author of the book, Le Tadelakt. If you are interested you can find this on Amazon.

Tadelakt is a form of lime which, when finished and polished correctly has the ambiance of marble but unlike marble is warm, impermiable to water, easily sculpted and extremely nice to look at and touch.

Great course, taught by a great teacher.

While we were studying, it began to rain and it rained hard. It didn't stop for 24 hours and many people were flooded out. All day today was spent helping people to get the waves of mud out of their houses. One local person had a pool of water around their house which was a metre and a half deep. That's about five feet. So their entire house was swamped. A few locals, the pompiers, myself and my father in law, spent the day separating their things from the mud and stones washed in by the waves of water. It looked like a complete disaster but by the end of the day we had made huge progress. Drains were unblocked and the mud cleared away. There's more to do tomorrow but it's looking good.

Here's a photo of an orchard beside the house that was flooded. Below that is a photo of the course in tadelakt.

Art en Capital

The entrance.


Yong Man Kwon, from south Korea now living in the south of France.


View of Korean works and statues by Yvone Cleragerue.


I also visited Art en Capital yesterday. It took place in the Grand Palais des Champs Elysees, Paris.
This is an annual event. An exhibition of artists who are not represented by galleries and who live and work in the centre of Paris.
The first thing that strikes you is the enormous number of artists that are in Paris who are eager to exhibit but who are not represented. The exhibition had several hundred artists. It's very confusing to see this exhibition because there is no jury process and as such you have very good work placed beside not very good work. On the other hand, as the organisers say, the public decides what is good or not.

If you want to, you can reserve an entire 9m stand for your work which protects it from landing beside the work of someone that won't compliment it. It's a bit expensive but as there are thousands of art buyers attending the investment is a good one and great marketing. A lot better value than a particular, Irish art fair, at half the price.

There was some terrific work there. Particularly from visiting Asian artists. Their levels of skill and focus are impressive. In huge contrast with European artists there is an energy and daring in the work that is very strongly restrained. It feels like a wild horse that has been, barely tamed and is only holding itself back enough to perform for a particular moment. Unlike a lot of European art where the artists almost seem bored or going through the motions in their work.

The Asian artists have a lot of academic background and training yet they also have this fierce energy to get out there and express something bigger, better, brighter and stronger. Bursting out of the restraints of their academic training and using that famous focused intensity.

Icons

Yesterday, after setting up in the atelier in Bastile, I visited two exhibitions that I had been curious about. One was in Nation. An exhibition by an Icon Painter who studied in Greece. The exhibition took place in a small gallery on the second floor of the Centre Culturel Franco-Japonais, 8 Passage Turqueti, 75011 Paris. Metro -Nation. The artist is Dominique Groffe.

The artist has reproduced paintings of icons on wood using gold and tempera (egg). I'm interested in this because it's a subject that I'm studying at the moment. By doing the course you learn an enormous amount about the history of painting (as far back as the Egyptians) and you discover some of the most unlikely mediums with which you can paint and which last for thousands of years.

Although I like the artists ability to recreate the icons of past artists, I didn't see anything new being explored in the work. Creating an icon where the subject is religious is like a prayer for many people. A meditation and study of past works and as such gives a great deal of personal pleasure. The original images are full of hidden meanings as well and were not merely decorations. So that is also a study of history in itself.

It's fantastic to see this kind of work still being done. Otherwise it just disappears forever.

FIAC 2007

This Year Fiac was hampered by the massive strike by the RATP. Despite this, FIAC was very well attended. All trains, metro, bus and RER were out on strike. There was literally no transport for either Thursday or Friday in or around Paris. Amazingly the Parisians didn't take offense despite the serious inconvenience. Instead they got onto their bikes, into their cars or put on their walking shoes and got on with it. There is an enormous amount of sympathy for the strikers and people believe that tolerating the events is for the greater good. Powerful attitude! The French are great at acting on principle or putting a concept before personal desires.

Narcissus Pickers

This painting is done in Oils and tempera on canvas.
It's for an exhibition in June.
Inspired by events in the south of france this spring.
It measures 150cm x 85cm