Islington Contemporary Art & Design Fair

I’m showing my etchings, aquatints and small drawings at ICADF week 2. Nearly all the work I’m showing has been made this year, and is mostly on a small scale with small limited edition etchings starting at £30 (a little bit more affordable than the superyacht prices at Frieze).

ICADF is on at Candid Arts, Torrens Street, EC1 – right behind Angel Tube station.

Kit Boyd - The Island Refuge - etching and watercolour

 

Portico Gallery 30th September – 2nd October

I’ll be showing my work with 20 Lambeth artists at the Portico Gallery next weekend as part of Lambeth Open. It’s also the West Norwood Feast that weekend so lots going on around the gallery including vintage markets, food stalls, and studios and artist homes nearby open to visit too. Click the invite below to go to the Lambeth Open website.

Lambeth Open Launch Private View Invitation

Auction now on

The artists in the current September Art exhibition have donated pieces in aid of the Trust for Chernobyl Children.

There are 89 pics, and with prices starting at just £10, you may get a bargain. My picture, The Tropical City, is no 87 on page 5 of the list.

September Art is currently on in the beautiful village of Wadhurst in East Sussex near Tunbridge Wells, and the auction pictures are on display in the parish hall. The auction and the exhibition run until 4pm on Sunday 11th September.

Online Art Auction

www.trust4chernobylchildren.org.uk

Trust for Chernobyl Children

September Art

I’m busy framing paintings and prints at the moment to show at September Art next week. It’s the first show of a busy few months for me, so hopefully you’ll be able to come along and say hello during one of the following events:

1st-11th September Art, Commemoration Hall, Wadhurst, East Sussex. Private View on the 1st – contact me with your address if you’d like an invitation.

16th September onwards for 3 weeks – Routes and Branches, an art trail around St John’s Wood in North London will feature something strange and dark from the My World section of my website. It’s being organised by Fitzrovia Noir.

1st-2nd October, Portico Gallery, West Norwood, London SE27 – I’ll be showing some recent work as part of Lambeth Open with a group of artists including friends Jentje Knuppe and David Taylor.

October 14th-16th: Islington Contemporary Art & Design Fair, Candid Arts Galleries, Angel, London N1 – I have a stand to show my recent etchings and some smaller drawings and paintings.

November 25th-27th: ASC Open Studios, 128 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8EQ – I’ll be opening up for a pre Christmas sale in my studio in central London

And a date for 2012: I’ll be showing my work at the Pavilion Cafe in Dulwich Park as part of the Dulwich Festival in May

Interview on Jotta

Forgot to post that I did a short interview with Jotta about my Man on a Laptop prize last month. Link to interview here
https://kitboyd.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/interview-on-jotta/

Man on a Laptop (after Samuel Palmer)

I was delighted last night to be awarded The People’s Prize for my etching shown above, as voted for by visitors to the exhibition. A big thank you if you went along and voted for me. Apparently there were only 2 votes between first and second place and the exhibition has had over 800 visitors.

It’s open until Saturday, so you still have time to visit. There are over 100 works in the exhibition by artists from across London.

UPCOMING SHOW

If you’d like to see more of my work, I’ve been selected to show at September Art this year in Wadhurst, Sussex between 1st and 10th September. Here’s a video from last year’s show: http://youtu.be/OQqdaTxqYjg

 

John Craxton show in Mayfair London W1

Yesterday I went along to the John Craxton Works on Paper show at Osbourne Samuel near Berkeley Square.

I wasn’t aware that John had produced so many wonderful linocuts over the years, and of course it made perfect sense that he used this form of printmaking; it so closely resembles his linear painting style.

It is also delightful to see cats depicted in such an unsentimental way. Cats in art often verge on the twee, though that rarely happens with Craxton’s feline works which are full of love and playfulness.

John Craxton at Osborne Samuel - Catalogue and Invite

I do think the watercolour he used on some of the linocuts weakens the power of the graphic image. The limited use of colour definitely works best with his printmaking, and several versions of the prints allow us to compare which are more successful. Interesting too to read about his technique and see his tippexing on the proofs of the linos which he printed when incomplete to see what his next steps would be; this is how I’ve also done my own linocuts recently (one shown here below).

As well as the linos there are also a few etchings and lithographs. The exhibition covers Craxton’s whole career from some formative neo-romantic pen and ink drawings from the 1940s upto Christmas cards from the last years of his life.

The show is only on for 1 more week, and I’d recommend going along before these rarely seen works disappear into private collections (many of them have sold).

The catalogue is online, so if you can’t make it along you can have a virtual visit:  http://www.osbornesamuel.com/

If you can visit in person, it’s worth picking up the engaging and personal essay by Gerard Hastings titled Inhabiting Delight which acts as a guide to the works in the show. The gallery also has signed copies of Ian’s book available for £30.

Below is one of my recent linocuts, hand-printed in my studio:

Kit Boyd - Eye of the Green Man (Linocut 2011)

Article on new biography of Samuel Palmer

There is an article on the new biography of Samuel Palmer in the Evening Standard this evening – he has been my main inspiration over the last few years.

Here’s another of my etchings – this one inspired by Early Morning, but with the group of figures replaced by a man on a laptop.

Man on a Laptop (Early Morning)

Review of book here:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/book/article-23955922-mysterious-wisdom-remains-in-the-end-a-mystery.do

John Craxton at Tate Britain and in print

John Craxton

Last night saw the launch of the new book on the life and work of John Craxton at Tate Britain.

Written by Ian Collins, who came to know Craxton well in the last 10 years of his life, and published by Lund Humphries, the book also features an introduction by Sir David Attenborough, who was filming a piece for next week’s Culture Show on Craxton amidst the timely new display of his paintings at Tate Britain.

As well as the Tate’s collection of Craxton’s work, there are several important paintings lent from private collectors from his early work when sharing a studio with Lucian Freud to his later Ghika influenced landscapes from Crete. There are also some very wonderful letters from Craxton, which are works of art in themselves.

I wrote my degree dissertation on Craxton and have loved his work for many years. He never did respond to my letters asking to interview him (though a few years later sent me a very sweet card with his apologies for not being able to come to a show I had on as he was in Crete). It was fascinating to find out that Craxton had forbidden anyone to write about him during his lifetime, but that he had finally agreed to Ian writing this monograph to be published to celebrate his 90th birthday. Such a shame he isn’t around to see the day, but both the book and the Tate display are highly recommended, and will hopefully bring Craxton the wider recognition his beautiful and blissful paintings deserve.

Rootstein Hopkins Draw More

Spent a lovely evening at the Private View for Draw More, the new Rootstein Hopkins exhibition at the Morley Gallery in Waterloo. The evening began with cava and prize-giving by Maggi Hambling in the hidden away garden. The deserved winner of the Drawing from the Imagination category was the beautiful Mother Autumn by Stephanie Greenslade. I’ve scanned it from the catalogue here as it’s not online anywhere, and deserves a wide audience. The exhibition is on until June 11th, and you can vote for your favourite piece from the exhibition if you go along.

Copyright Stephanie Greenslade

An A/P of my etching Man on a Laptop (after Samuel Palmer) is also on show (no.99, and reproduced on the first page of the catalogue next to the sweet John Hegley introduction). I’ve just started the edition of this which is now just on sale through my website:

Rootstein Hopkins Draw More Catalogue with my picture and John Hegley intro