The London Art Fair

The London Art Fair starts today. I've been going down to see it with friends for a good few years now and it's usually really interesting.

Top galleries from all over the UK have stands and it's a chance to see a very wide range of contemporary art - everything from conceptual to graphic to photorealist to abstract and everything in between. This is the Edgar Modern stand a couple of years ago from their site.

One artist I always look for is Barbara Rae - she's usually represented by a large glowing painting that sings out when you look down from the mezzanine floor above. She's a Scottish painter who is a real colourist, showing the ongoing influence of the Scottish Colourists in Scottish painting.


Barbara Rae:

I'm planning to go at the weekend with friends.
It's a great chance to see some of the best contemporary painting, from all over the country, in one place.

Islington (where the exhibition is) has a good gallery as well - The Hart Gallery. In recent years I've been lucky and they've had a show of David Blackburn's work (sadly no relation) - gorgeous glowing abstracts that need to be seen in reality to be fully appreciated.

There is also a rather nice art shop further up the road - which I may try to avoid as it is all too tempting.


and Kurt Jackson's work will be there with The Lemon Street Gallery and others:

Kurt Jackson







Then there's Gallipoli, a really nice little Turkish restaurant .....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Eye, Urban/Rural exhibition

Image
Vivien Blackburn's work in the Urban/Rural show We've just hung a group show at the The Eye Project, Urban/Rural show.  If you want to come and see it it's on for a month - well worth seeing, 11 lovely artists and some fabulous work. Those large canvasses are 40 inches square. There are rural landscapes, flowerscapes, intriguing textile work including a large knitted building, abstracts .... something for everyone. It's in the gallery below the cafe in the Adult Education Centre at the top of Wellington street, Leicester, opposite Fenwicks.  Meet the Arttists day is Saturday 1st April 10-2.  Come and have a chat with us?
Read more

paint or sketch trees: challenge

Image
Close up of tree bark, Marqueyssac, France. photo: Vivien Blackburn Another challenge Rather than another update on the seascapes I've decided to run another challenge in response to feedback from the trees post. Feedback from people said they got a lot out of the skies challenge and I'm sure you will out of this one :>) click the image on the left to link to the original post on trees and you can check all posts with the tag 'trees' here The challenge is to produce sketches of trees done from life. These can be: close ups, extreme close ups, whole tree, part of tree, distant views - whatever you want. Style: anything goes - photorealism to impressionism but with underlying observation Medium: your choice, anything goes :>) oil paints, acrylics, watercolours, mixed media, charcoal, graphite, coloured pencils, pen, oil pastels, pastels, pastel pencils ....... etc etc etc Timescale: we'll finish at the end of July and I'll post links to your blogs t
Read more

playing with watercolours and coloured pencils

Image
This is a page of watercolour studies of pansies, not intended to be 'a painting', I did a while ago that I came across. It's a grey rainy day and the light isn't good to get on with the canvasses so I decided to try to pull it together as a composition. I used a bit more watercolour and coloured pencils and cropped it and added the soft blue green background to cool it down a little - the colours felt too hot. The deep dark pansies were really velvety and intense and maybe not the colour scheme I would have set out to use with the orange and pale yellows - but the background helps to knit them together. Bringing the soft mauves into the darker flowers also helped. I also took another look at a mixed media woodland that was unfinished and worked a little more on that. It has a little oil pastel in the early stages, watercolour and then coloured pencils.
Read more