Exhibition Announcement, Finally!

Excited to FINALLY announce details of my first solo show in nearly 4 years!! ‘All Alone In A Crowded Room’ is an exhibition featuring 22 paintings exploring the experiences of grief and loss. The title comes from the feeling of isolation grief can cause even when it’s something felt by everyone and often shared at the same time. The show opens on Wednesday 7th September at Copeland Gallery in Peckham, London. 

This body of work has been 2 years of planning and production and I’m really proud of how it’s turned out. I can’t wait for other people to finally get to see it! 

I’ll be updating this blog with news of the show and more info on all the work and what it’s about.

Quick Break

Took a break from the exhibition paintings for a few weeks to work on a couple of paintings for other things. Was nice to work on something different for a bit (even if the images are still referencing similar themes). Back to the exhibition work now with about 6 months to go and a lot of painting left to do!

Better Late Than Never

My ‘weekly’ blog got a bit away from me for a bit but from now on I’ll be back to trying to update it erratically each week!

Although my blogging has been slacking, I’ve been busy in the studio working on the paintings for my exhibition as well as a couple of pieces for other projects. I think I’m about half way through the work for the exhibition so the paintings are starting to pile up and getting into crunch time now!

I wanted to start including some of the out of studio art related stuff I’ve been doing in the blog so I’ll start with the beautiful show by Jenna Gribbon at Massimo De Carlo called ‘Light Holding’ I went to last week. If you’re in London definitely go and check it out. It’s on til 26th Feb.

A Pair

Just a quick update as I’ve been slacking with the posts but I’ve been busy in the studio trying to get these two monochrome paintings finished before the end of the year. Originally the idea was to do these two large scale but decided they would work better as smaller more intimate paintings. Really enjoyed working on a smaller scale and have been loving using the limited colour palette.

Reference Images

Photo by Street Art Atlas

In this weeks blog I want to talk a bit about the process behind getting the reference images for my paintings. When I first started painting I would just spend hours trawling the internet looking for images and then use them without realising I should probably be getting permission from the photographers! I eventually started getting permission but quickly found I was looking for more specific elements in my reference images. A lot of the images I had used in the past had been taken by the photographer Marc Hayden so I reached out to him to discuss working together. For the work in my previous style the photos required would involve lots of close up portraits in different poses usually taken in public places like cafes. I knew for my new work I wanted more control and had more specific ideas in mind.

After everything that had happened in 2019 and having experimented with my painting technique, I knew that I wanted to produce a body of work that explored the theme of loss and grief. I spent time coming up with ideas of how I could express my experiences through my painting. I came up with a series of reference ideas and contacted Marc to arrange a photoshoot. We hired a studio and created the backdrop for the images. This photoshoot centred around capturing the emotional impact of loss based on the physical expression of grief and how we interact with others. It was the most direct involvement I’d had in a photoshoot and provided the images for what I thought would make up my next exhibition.

Photo by Street Art Atlas

In March 2020 I started painting a mural for Extinction Rebellion in East Dulwich. This was the first mural I had painted in my new style. I used an image from the photoshoot I had done earlier in the year but, rolling back the years, I incorporated images of flowers I had found on the internet into the painting to represent my theme of life and death for this mural. It was painting these flowers that made me realise I could combine figurative painting with other elements. The mural was pretty abruptly stopped by lockdown 1 of many! This break from painting the wall gave me time back in the studio to reflect on what I wanted to do next. It’s from this mural that the idea for the second photoshoot came. I wanted to explore creating a set and bringing prop elements into the reference images. This photoshoot felt like another progression with more control over the realisation of my ideas. The idea behind this shoot was to create images for a second body of work, however after seeing all the images together it became clear they were all about the same thing! 

Quick One

Just a quick one this week, been busy working on this painting in the studio and recovering from turning 30 at the weekend!

Changing Style

Photo by Street Art Atlas

I think the next thing I need to do in this blog is to explain my change in painting style that has happened in the last few years. After everything that happened in the previous blog, I found myself really not enjoying work. Whether painting in the studio or murals. I started to really resent the lack of meaning that I felt my work had and it seemed like I was just repeating the same process over and over again. Paint a colourful background, then paint the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the hair in black and white over the top and repeat. I decided that if I wasn’t enjoying doing the thing I love to do the most anymore then I needed to do something about it. I knew that I wanted to try something new, but that I still wanted to paint portraits. I also knew that I wanted the work to at least have more meaning to myself.

The logical step seemed to be to start painting in colour which was something I hadn’t really done since school. I told everyone I knew I was taking a ‘sabbatical’ as I didn’t know what else to call it and started to practice. After all the frustration in not enjoying painting and dealing with everything that was going on in my life at the time it felt good to push myself. I ended up spending pretty much a year working out what I wanted my work to be like and then a global pandemic and countless lockdowns gave me plenty of time to work it out. Eventually I started to plan a body of work and decided I wanted to try and explore the theme of loss and grief through the work. It took a long time to get to that decision but now feels like it makes so much sense.

Photo by Streets Dept

There was a period where I had really gone off my old work and couldn’t see it in any positive way. Now it just feels like part of a progression. I had some great times painting the old stuff and in hindsight some of it isn’t that bad! I also think the classic feeling of never being happy with anything you do gets in the way a lot. I’m really enjoying working in my new style, it gives me a lot more freedom to paint in different ways and it has meaning to me which means even if I’m not fully happy with the finished painting at least it has that!

First Proper Post

Photo by Street Art Atlas

I think a good place to start the blog is probably to explain what the work for the exhibition is about and the reasons behind it. It’s a tough one to write but I’ll give it a go!

The work for the exhibition explores the themes of loss and grief and it all started from my own personal experience. In January 2019 at the age of 26 my best friend, Oli Hilsdon, passed away after a 5 year battle with Glioblastoma Multiforme, the most aggressive and lethal form of adult brain cancer. The impact of the loss was huge on anyone who knew him and is an experience no one can ever be prepared for. I met Oli when I was 15, he was an incredibly smart and kind person, but the thing I remember best is just how much fun he was. The way he handled his illness was so unbelievably impressive and he never let it get in the way of him living his life. He was so supportive of me and my work even though he didn’t particularly give a shit about art! Memories can become a tough thing to deal with after the loss of a loved one, but I’m so grateful for all the ones I have with Oli. I miss him all the time.

The feelings after a devastating loss are indescribable and talking about it is something I have struggled with ever since. The inability to talk about it or process it properly is really what started the work for this exhibition. I found the easiest way to explore how I was feeling and what I was thinking was through my work. I’ve used painting over the last couple of years as a way to help me deal with how I feel about losing Oli and it gives me space to grieve. I hope with the exhibition people will be able to explore their own feelings of loss, whether that’s grieving the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship or one of the many different versions of loss we experience.

The first painting I produced in this series is the mural pictured above. I had started to explore symbolism and the way we reflect grief physically. I set up a couple of photoshoots to get reference images for the exhibition work and was given the chance to paint this wall on Hanbury Street by Not Banksy Forum. The mural explores the idea of living in harmony with grief, and the solace I found in accepting its presence in my life. The 3 candles in the image are to honour Oli and the mural was painted for him. I painted all 3 flames and then the very final thing I did was paint over the last flame in what I thought would be a cathartic act, but actually it just turned out to be very upsetting. All jokes aside, standing at the top of that ladder painting over the final flame after 2 weeks of solid work on the wall was a very emotional moment and is a perfect example of how painting can help you process something.

Photo by Not Banksy Forum

In memory of Oli a charity has been set up which funds brain tumour research. www.olihilsdonfoundation.org

Giving a blog a go!

In September 2022 I’m putting on an exhibition in Peckham. Rather than just showing a few shots of paintings on Insta and then suddenly appearing with an exhibitions worth of work, I’ve decided to go old school and start a blog on my website to document the build up. I’m hoping this gives me a bit more space to explain the thought process behind the work, makes it more personal, and encourages me to actually show you all what’s going on!