Monday 1 December 2014

Exhibition opening this weekend


The new exhibition, celebrating the first birthday of Camden Image Gallery, opens at the weekend, and above is one of the new pieces I'll be exhibiting. It's been a few months since I last exhibited, as I've had a lot of other things to focus on, so I'm looking forward to showing work again.
Camden Image Gallery has been very significant for me over the past year. The managing director is one of my close friends, and I've made many new friends through the gallery too. I remember, over a year ago, the first time I saw it before it was open to the public, and the way that it has grown over the last year is inspiring. Elena works extraordinarily hard, and I'm very proud to be associated with this gallery.
I'm really excited about the new pieces - I was intending to keep these drawings in charcoal only until I was asked to be part of this exhibition, but I feel that using colour has also been really effective. I love how streaks of vibrant colour come through in certain places, and I love the build up of layers, as in my paintings. One thing I'm really enjoying is the freedom to make mistakes and blur them again, and being flexible with how I build up layers. I'm really thinking of this body of work as experimentation, and maybe that is aiding my process.
Something I've really picked up on in these drawings is the texture that can be developed from constantly screwing up paper and drawing more layers. In the image above in particular, the final layers of pastel look like tracings of texture, and this is something I'm very keen on. I'm now even more enthusiastic about working on paper for a while, and drawing rather than painting. I have an idea for a large and intricate piece of work, totally different to previous pieces, that I plan to work on when I get back to Sweden next month, and now plan to incorporate colour into this piece, as well as monochrome charcoal drawings. 
My recent work, as well as being pieces in their own right, has also been serving as preparatory work for the new idea, and it has really inspired me. I've learned a lot about which types of paper work best, and the different results that different papers can yield. I've now been working with the theme of weathering for just over two years, and it's amazing how the idea has grown and developed in that time. Using paper allows for lots of new possibilities, and I want to keep working with this.
This exhibition is also significant, because it is likely to be my last exhibition in London for a while. On 2nd January I am going back to Sweden, and this time should be staying for the foreseeable future. I'm looking forward to producing more work, and exhibiting in a new country.