gallery rabbits dec 2023

Southampton City gallery: Barry Flanagan hare bronzes. 

Two hare bronze casts as found at Southampton city gallery, UK. The sculptor is Barry Flanagan. The top work is 'Leaping Hare' and dates from 1980. The bottom one is titled 'Anvil' and dates from 1981.

The two paintings were painted from life in the gallery during December 2023, and are done in oils on mounting board sized at 12 x 9.5".

Graham Chapman (Lucie Ash Invisible Portraits exhibition)

During my stay at the Southampton City Art Gallery in spring 2022, I was invited to provide a small painting to be included as part of a larger artwork for the Lucie Ash Invisible Portraits exhibition. 

This larger artwork was to contain a large amount of small portraits done by artists and non arts, as a part of a celebration of the LGBTIQ+ community. The artwork, split over two panels consisted of 646 separate pieces of artwork, done in a variety of styles. My contribution was one that featured Graham Chapman, a member of Monty Python who had died in the early 1980's. 

It is painted in oils on a supplied, cut to size canvas (8.6cm x 7.7cm), which I sanded down and re-primed to make as smooth as possible as the weave was crude at that scale. As reference I used a screen capture showing Chapman in one of his many Monty Python characters, the army general who would typically interrupt a sketch and cancel it for the next one in the programmes running order. 

The exhibition ran from September 2022 through to January 2023.

Bust of Major Raymond Smythies - oil painting

Bust of Major Raymond Smythies. The plaster original dates from 1912 and this casting, as found at the Southampton city art gallery, dates from 1971. The artist was Gaudier-Brzeska.

The bust is wonderful to look at, with the sculpted form really giving a clue to the character of the Major.

Painted from life during early June 2022. Oil on supermarket cardboard, sized at 12” x 9.5”.

Gallery exhibition poster 2022

A selection of my work is on show at the City art gallery, Southampton, UK. The pictures are to be seen at the entrance and I will be painting in the main hall most days during the event, which starts on the 9th April and finishes 4th June. Southampton City Art Gallery, Commercial Road, Southampton SO14 7LP
This is the poster created by the gallery for the event.