Yardley Arts Summer Open 2026

 

I couldn't resist the open call for this when I saw it. A small art centre in Northants. Kind of like the Alex a few years on. It's in a former Victorian school house of the one-room type. Anyhoo. I've got 3 works accepted - Paradise Lost, Loaded down on James Street, and Fallen from Olympus VI. So I'm pleased. I delivered the work yesterday and will go to the PV on Thursday. As the poster says, the exhibition runs from 25 June to 19 July.

PS 25th June. Went to the PV last night - we were a bit frazzled by the heat already, but well worth turning up to see the show. There's an online gallery, too, so you can get a kind of sense of it .

Another press in the studio

 Eric had this rather cute galley press lurking unused in the basement of the local adult education centre. So he decided to reclaim it and give it a new home at the Alex. My guess is 1930s, age-wise. Had a little play. Did the "tools" linocut on it and now broken out the old wooden letters...

 

Just Cuz... Anna Bloom

 I was riffling through some papers the other day and what should fall out but this! The original bad translation of Anna Blume that I found in a second-hand wallet I bought about fifty years ago. How magnificent it's still here. Testament to the enduring power of art. AI will never get it.

Tools

 I did this quick little design to adorn my next lot of "Art is my Bag" paper bags. Decided to print them on the last half-dozen postcard blanks as well. You never know. It's a little celebration of everything you need for relief printmaking.... Well. Decent ink, decent roller, too. The rest is kinda optional.

2x2 Linocuts

 

I’ll tell you something. There’s something better than getting into an exhibition with “International” in the title. It’s when an artist for whom you have the greatest regard asks you to participate in a two-man show.

Even better. This exhibition has been a surprise to me. Eric showed me pictures of the pieces he planned on including, which gave me a rough idea of those of mine I might include. But the act of pairing up the actual works and propping them up around the place gave a whole other perspective.

They are an unsentimental collection. They are a direct engagement with things in the world. Not “unmediated”, but mediated through that part of the artist that lives between eye and hand. That part immersed in the history of art.

The subject matter here is broadly “traditional” – still lifes, nudes, townscapes – the bread-and-butter subject matter of art. And that subject matter is presented with a matter-of-factness born out of looking, interrogated through drawing. An assertion of the human in this age of technology.

Leicester Print Workshop - Smallprint International

 Got the news that I've got one piece accepted for this exhibition - Naomi Salient, which was the best of the bunch I submitted. So I'm pleased that happened - confirms my own judgement, as it were.The exhibition runs from 5th June through 11th July - They are open Weds through Saturday each week. My plan is to send the piece in by post, so that I can make the PV on the 5th. 

I know Leicester is only just up the road, but getting into an exhibition with "International" in the title is totally cool. 

PS 23/05/2026 Here's the PV invite. Eric gets the picture at the top in the middle.

 

Loaded down on James Street

 A second of what could be a series of local scenes with people. This is our friend J who is often seen on her way to one of her many jobs carrying everything she may possibly need. Plus all the stuff she didn't unpack from the last one. Such is life...

My method in these has been to do some very quick notes in situ, and then try and make the picture from memory based on those original notes. This frees me from being too beholden to reality in the composition. I then go back and check for any glaring omissions or things I've added that aren't there. With this one I had remembered six upper floor windows when there are five. 

Same thing with J. I turned a corner and saw her coming towards me. The drawing was then based on the "snapshot" I took in my mind. 

North Street Blues

 My wife asked me to do a picture kind of like this as a present for somebody who's leaving the town.*  (Don't tell her until after 26th!) Luckily I'd already got something not entirely different planned. It was just a case of changing the central figure. I can now use that figure in a different location. That's the plan, anyway.

I'd remembered some paintings I'd done when I was about 17, largely based on/inspired by Utrillo. I liked his Montmartre street scenes and felt he was right to include people (though, admittedly he was not very good at them). So I did a couple of Parisian street senes with people in them, though people from the 1970s, including, I remember, my Latin teacher. So people were a key element of my "artistic practice" even then. 

Looking at this print having completed it, I can see something of Diether Kressel's woodcuts in their sheer crudity and jumbliness. It's definitely got the kind of vibe I was going for. 

* PS She loved it by the way. 

Naomi Reguardant

Number 5 in the Heraldic Naomi series. Though there are a couple of other ideas here, I think I'l stop for the moment. 

This one was fun. Reguardant refers to the looking over the shoulder, but I like how adding the mirror introduces the idea of regarding oneself. Which is what she was doinng before she was interrupted. 

Naomi Rampant

 This one's better, tho in my heart not as good as yesterday's two. I haven't decided whether this is my 3 to submit or if I might carry on with the heraldic theme some more. There's Passant (walking while waving like English lions), Haurient (rising out of water) and Reguardant (looking over shoulder). There's also Volant (flying) so potentially even more bonkers than this one. All of these have potential and deadline isn't until 22nd of the month, so who knows?

Naomi Dormant

 I'm feeling less good about this one. It's lacking something, I think. Maybe I need to redo it or perhaps try something else. Anyway. For the record, here it is.

Naomi Couchant

 This is the second small print I finished today. The drawing for this one drew partially on a life drawing from last summer, but I also made use of a poseable figure and drew from a painting by Renoir. I won't tell you which one cuz you ought to go and look yourself. You should be able to do that in this age of AI and stuff shouldn't you? Also a rather rough-hewn version of the Vair pattern from heraldry, too.

Naomi Salient

 I've been working on a series of 4 small prints the laat few weeks. I noticed a call from Leicester Print Workshop for prints of less than 100 sq cm. It calls for a max of 3 prints, so I thought that if I did 4 I could pick the best 3. I wanted them to be "me" so I thought I'd start from last summer's life drawings that have given so generously recently. When I was looking at the drawings of Naomi, standing, lying down etc, the heraldic descriptions, "Salient", "Dormant", "Couchant" and "Rampant" came to me. That stupid idea gave me enough excitement to carry through the series. Some of the drawings needed to be tweaked to a greater or lesser extent to achieve that idea, and they all developed in parallel.

I printed the first 2 today and, I hope, will get the other 2 printed tomorrow. This one needed the least tweaking, but allowed me to develop ideas for the wallpaper and other props.

Leamington Open 2026

 This exhibition has been a lucky one for me. I got the maximum two pieces accepted in 2022, 2024 and now in 2026. My entries this year were Lette Matrimoniale and Green Room, Pink Man. I like the Leamington Open because it's a tough one to get in. This year, 350 works were submitted, 111 shortlisted and only 52 making the final cut. There were 47 artists on the final list, indicating that thi year five of us had two works accepted. 2028 looks like being their centenary exhibition, so I shall have to be on top of my game for that one.

The exhibition is at the Pump Rooms and runs from 20 Feb to 3 May. 

PS Here's an "official" photo of the hanging:

 

PPS (7th March) I have heard that red stickers have appeared against both of them
 

Coventry Art Societies Exhibition (CASE 2026)

 Today was the selection day for this exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry. I managed to get the first three of the Fallen from Olympus series accepted (Numbers I, II and III). Several of the Rugby Artists and Makers were helping out. It's always worth doing this to get an insight into how the judging process works. And as a helper, you get to do a lot of walking, from the "entries" pile to the judges and thence to the "in" or the "reject" pile. And over, and over, and over again.

The Show will run from February 20th until April 19th. So plenty of chance to check it out. 

PS A photo of the hanging taken at the PV on the 19th

 

Rugby Artists and Makers Exhibition - Pick Up Six

 Hanging today and running from 3rd Feb - 16 Feb. Decided to give Girl with Cat a public view for the first time. See how it goes. The exhibition looks good on "paper" - here's the Flipbook Catalogue.

 Quick Postscript 3rd Feb - Looks good in peron, too. Probably my favorite RA&M exhibition to date.

Your Country Needs You (Amelia)

 

Whenever I have an idea for a print, there is always a wee small voice telling me more-or-less insistently that I shouldn’t do it. But I always persevere and plug on until I’ve got something. It’s nice to get some real, physical artwork of Amelia done. In these days of AI, I relish doing something with my clumsy human hands.

I don't usually venture into such an overtly politial arena as this, but I think it's a message for everyone, especially young men. I feel at least partly responsible for the moral cess-pit that this country has become, but I'm too old now to do much about it. Apart from this. It's young men who will carry the burden of rebuilding the place into somewhere they can stand tall. And win their own real-life Amelia.

It's currently a print on nice paper, but I might do a card version in just purple and black. That's the idea, anyhoo. 

Green Room, Pink Man

 

 Another print that started out as one of August's life drawings. The original drawing was done quickly with brush and ink after I had worked the pose to death over the previous hour or so. It was like I had internalised the essence of the picture and could now splurge it on to the paper. I kept fairly close to the drawing for the print, except for the plant which is now far more luxuriant than the sorry specimen suffering in a school art-room. I also wanted to print it in green and blue, and jokingly call it "Green Man". But that didn't work. So pink and green. Meat and veg, as it were. The yellow stripe refers to the suboptimal lighting in the room, with the summer sun shining over the model's shoulder, and the rather poor yellow light in the room.  But it also, I think, helps to balance the picture somewhat.

I arrived at Green Room, Pink Man as a basic descriptive title (which I find often works), but I feel it also has an implication of "The Green Room" as a somewhat debauched space and that "Pink Man" is an assertion worth making in these identitarian days.