Last night was amazing. I went down the studio, and by the end of it I was absolutely exhausted in the best possible way.

It was like a big stress relief. As Roy said, who I was with: deep relaxation.

I don’t think of it like that. You’re normally in the flow state, but I didn’t link it with deep relaxation. Which sounds silly, but it is. It’s a real letting go of anything that’s going on, and I just had the best time.

We painted our faces

Roy aka invited me to do a collaboration piece where we paint one side of our face, put it on a small canvas, drew over it and signed it, each side.

It was more than just making a piece of art together. It felt like a real moment in history. Not saying it’s anything grand, but it was me and a dear friend who’s also become an artist.

I knew him through art, but he became an artist quite late as well, later in life.

And we’ve imprinted our faces on this canvas. Just thinking, in 20, 30 years’ time we look back at it and it’s there as that reminder. I think that’s absolutely beautiful about art.

It’s different than taking photographs. And I’m not saying photography isn’t art, because it is. But in the sense of regular people taking regular photos, that has a certain feel to it. Something that you created as a painting feels different.

Curved lines

I worked on that with him, and I did some more bits on my automatic painting piece, as I call it.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed painting these curved lines on it. It’s weird, isn’t it, how colours and shapes affect you.

Doing these curved colours, I think it really adds to it, and it added to my state of mind at the time. It was really enjoyable to do that.

I’m going to have to try and go down more often on a Tuesday evening. That’s pretty much the only weeknight evening I’m free, so have that as the set time. Maybe. We’ll see.

Free open calls only

I’ve also been applying for a lot of open calls. If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you’ll see I’ve applied to so many open calls over my seven years of being an artist again, after a 20-year break.

I found a way for AI to give me a list of open calls which are relevant, so I can apply quickly. I find it quite overwhelming looking for stuff, or knowing where to look. But it’s helped me so much in just finding relevant open calls.

I set a rule to apply for free ones. Because, as you probably know, they can get a lot, paying 10, 15, 20, 40 quid, sometimes 20 quid per painting.

I think it’s borderline criminal to charge, really. I know people have costs for setting things up, but the bigger establishments should have some kind of funding for this, or subsidise the fee to something very minimal.

I got accepted to one, a VR art exhibition. It said it was free, and then when I got accepted they said you’ve got to pay a 40 quid admin fee. And I was like, what the fuck? Why?

Setting up a VR exhibition, it can’t be that. There’s not much physicality to it in terms of setting up. I know someone will have to set up the VR stuff, but I don’t know. I’ll look into it more and see if it’s worth it.

(Update since: They chased me for money twice, then said because I hadn’t paid within a day the rejected me, I’m fuming!!!)

The £200 we turned down

As part of Studio BRUT, we got accepted for a local grant, but we rejected it.

We got accepted for £200 for art materials to run workshops. The stipulation was that the art materials can only be used within their district.

On one hand that makes sense, because they’re funding their district. But it was a parish council. We’re talking £200, and they wanted us to only use these art materials for people in that area.

We turned it down because it seemed a bit silly, saving art materials for a certain part of our town. And what if not many people come from the local area?

It’s quite an out-of-town, rural area, on the outskirts of Swindon. People are less likely to come to stuff from that area than from inside the town, the town centre.

So we turned that down, which feels a bit weird. But it also feels good that we’re exercising our moral judgement a little bit, and not just accepting anything because it’s money.

Salon of the Rejected

I’ve been preparing for the Salon des Refusés. My French is terrible. Salon of the Rejected.

The deadline for the open call was 8th October. It’s for Wiltshire and Swindon artists. I’m sure we will do some kind of international thing, but we’re trying to showcase local art.

You have Bristol about 40 miles away. You have Oxford about 40 miles away. You have London about 70 miles away. So we wanted our own kind of hub, promoting our own artists.

And hopefully this will encourage the untrained, the late bloomers, the rejects, to do more of their work.

There’s one guy who joined the BRUT List, and his work is amazing. He admits himself he isn’t trained, or any good at painting. He’s quite humble about it.

But he uses a lot of stencils, and newspaper clippings, and paints over things, and the end result is amazing. It’s usually based around music, music of the 80s and 90s, and it has deeper messages hidden within it. I love it.

That’s the quintessential outsider, isn’t it? Someone who’s just doing it for the love of it. They’re not trained, they just focus on the art. And if we can help more people see that person’s art, then that’s brilliant.

Come to opening night

A little break

I haven’t done a weekly art practice for a couple of weeks. I had a little break and went to Benidorm for a week with family.

I’ll share this one photo of a lovely beach there. That’s it, really. No art gallery visits this time.

The following week I was off work as well, but unfortunately I didn’t get any studio time. I had some nice family time.

But I was still doing little bits and pieces, promoting things, sharing my stuff on YouTube. So things are ticking along. I feel like things are progressing.

Wiltshire Life

Ah yes, we were in Wiltshire Life magazine. I was going to say high society. Not quite high society, but you have to have a look yourself.

It’s certainly not your lowbrow kind of magazine, let’s put it that way. It’s for people in Wiltshire who are kind of upper middle class, the kind of people who still buy that kind of magazine.

So we had a feature in there, a society piece, with a lot of photos and a short write-up. I’ll post it below here.

That was really cool. I just contacted them a few months ago and asked about it, and they put it in. I thought that was lovely, and they’re happy to get more stuff in there from me.

That also made me realise that these publications need you. You think you’re going there begging for an article, but they need interesting stuff that’s going on.

Check out the full article here

Just bear that in mind if you’re sending out a press release. What you’re doing might not feel interesting, but it’s going to be interesting to a lot of people, or a certain group of people, at least.

So that’s it for this week. Please reach out in the comments, I’m happy to chat any time. It’s been very quiet. Let me know how you’re doing and what you’re up to.

SLART.

We Turned Down a £200 Art Grant