Friday 26 August 2011


I've set a date for my small exhibition. It will begin on Monday 21 November and end on Saturday 10th December 2011. As the exhibition will be in 2 glass cases on the first floor of the library, I'm hoping to use the split in order to theme my exhibition around firstly current work, and secondly, as a kind of retrospective of how my pen and ink work has developed over the past 10 years. Looking back at my older pieces now I had forgotten how small I began back in 2000, when my work was then mainly done in A5 sketchbooks. They seemed to take forever to do, and the nibs I used were the finest kind, I didn't begin to use a variety of nibs until 2005 when I began to experiment with larger pieces.

Those early drawings, like this exhibition, were exercises in self-confidence building. I find that confidence is like the weather; changeable and subject to uncontrollable circumstances. The mind, like meteorological forces, is unpredictable and sensitive.

Meanwhile the rain beats desultory time on our neighbour’s conservatory. My bookmark marches in sad fascination through Douglas Botting's biography of Gavin Maxwell. It's a strange biography - both sympathetic, admiring, and at the same time it never flinches from baring the man warts and all. I'm three quarter's through it, hooked. I know it ends badly, but I can't stop reading.

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