New drawings and another submission

Turner-esque sunset on the river Arno

I am aware that my blogging has been somewhat sparse of late due to all sorts of things going on.  I aim to improve in future!

I had a wonderful week in Florence with Pete and eldest daughter; it was so lovely to show her all our favourite frescoes and walk round the city with her.  

View from the window of the fabulous Uffizi Museum

On two days during the week before last,  I worked with Andrew Dalton and Rob Oldfield in Richmond to take down the paintings belonging to the Green Howards Museum, where we hung them about a year ago in their temporary space while the museum was being upgraded.  We then took the paintings up the hill back to their permanent, newly and beautifully refurbished museum space.  A hot, sweaty and very satisfying couple of days work; the paintings look splendid in their new spaces.

Furniture still stacked up all round the room, but the paintings look great back up on the wall!

I have made my arrangements to get down to London for the Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair; thanks to my daughter for being a very able assistant and to son for offering to assist with driving across London over the weekend.  It was part 1 this weekend; I saw some pictures of the show on Twitter, there was an exciting breadth of work.  My turn next weekend!  I have one or two queries to ask about and sort out on Monday, then I think I am ready. I have a comprehensive list so I don't forget anything!

Meanwhile I am happy to be able to say that I have been in the studio every day this week, yes, EVERY day.  Not all of them were whole days, but I have four finished drawings to show for it and I am satisfied with progress.  

Two of the new drawings. Above: untitled so far. Below: How Many Hopes. Both mixed media, 38.5 x 38.5 cm on thick water colour paper.

I seem to have spent most of yesterday preparing a new submission.  I  finally pressed the "send" button quite late at night, and experienced a huge sense of relief.  I wrote two short statements, edited, corrected, uploaded them and then selected my three images which caused more anxst and heart searching, uploaded those, accidentally removed them, started all over again and finally got to the review button, edited one of the statements as I found a typo, AND FINALLY PRESSED "MAKE PAYMENT". Job done and now fingers crossed, but I'll just forget about it until I hear whether I have been selected or not, this will be easy to do because I am very busy at the moment.

On Monday I am going to attend a meeting in Ripon at the Workhouse Museum, to plan my part in facilitating a school party making drawings for the Big Draw later this month. I'll be travelling over with Sue Slack, so it will be a nice chance for a catch up.

For the rest of the week I will be making some more home made business cards, each with an original drawing on the back and making cakes for the upcoming meeting at Kirkbymisperton village hall on Thursday evening, where Ian R Crane will be giving people an unbiased overview of the benefits and risks of fracking.  Obviously I will be in London by then but I'm planning to make the meeting in Pickering.

Once back, I'll be dividing my time between studio and home as there are some things that need to be done in the house, post builders.  I'll be erecting my trestle table in the old studio space, now library, to use when the weather is very cold too.  My studio is bitterly cold and damp in the bad weather and this might just be the opportunity to get those prints and artists' books started.

Shop window in Florence full of jolly Pinochio figures: they are one of the symbols of the city but I don't know why!




Images Sue Gough. All rights reserved