Sunday, February 27, 2011

Wreck No.3


oil on canvas 65x65cm

First of all, I have some good news.

I have had two pieces selected for the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) exhibition, in the Royal Scottish Academy building in Edinburgh this month - ‘Edith Stone’ and ‘Wreck No.2’, both recent. This annual event is a very prestigious show to be selected for; it shows the best contemporary stuff being produced, and only two hundred pieces were selected out of seven hundred submitted. It is confirmation that I have achieved a standard of work equal to when I last showed there – back in the early 1980s – and that the blind slog of the past few years has been worth it. So, you can imagine that this means a lot to me.

All I have to do now is build up The Body of Work, which means working even harder, and preferably less slowly. Finally got this one slogged out – through such interruptions as Xmas, hyperactive kittens, an interminable virus thing, and cold calls on the phone too numerous to mention.

Wreck No.3 takes the current series forward with a more complex landscape – a mash-up of the original photo, and landscape details sourced from Google Streetview. The sky is from various photos, and modified where composition demanded – specifically the darker diagonal shapes that funnel the eye down the right.

The tank is a Hetzer, an ambush gun, and the paint scheme is not exaggerated. I wanted to use its own camouflage to diffuse its very angular form so that the damage (the only bits using black) seems more shocking.

So, that’s done. Meanwhile I’ll have to see what’s in the In-tray - got to get on with that Body of Work…