studio news

Hello & welcome to my first studio news.

It’s December 2024.

I hope you’re interested in paint, painting techniques and painting because that is mostly what my studio news will be about.

I like to include so-called high and low culture in my work. Who gets to say which is which? Not just the subject matter, but also the materials and the colours. Fluorescent yellow, for example, is of course, extremely low as to be positively crass (hurray) but it can be so exciting to paint with and scintillating to look at, especially next to beige, sage greens and browns, which as colours are traditionally seen as very ‘tasteful’. There you have it - a trade off. In the olden golden days of painting - what is now viewed as high culture, but what was then just more of a necessity - no cameras no telly no nothing - if those painters had had access to fluorescent colours, they definitely would’ve used them.

Fluorescent yellow may not really appear in Nature but it is manifest everywhere in modern life and therefore it gets to go in my paintings (along with fluorescent pinks, oranges and greens). However, do not be beguiled into buying fluorescent blue - it really doesn’t do what it says on the tin (tube).

December in Britain is dark & dank. A challenge I have always set for myself is to paint my darkness in full colour. More on that another time.

works in progress December 2024/ image copyright Rosalind Faram

Book list:

Toulouse-Lautrec A Life

by Julia Frey

John Currin Selects

Museum of Fine Arts Boston 2003

Oppositions

Selected Essays by Mary Gaitskill

EXHIBITIONS

Currently showing:

Beep Painting Biennial, Elysium Gallery, Swansea Wales until 21st December

Upcoming:

Beep Painting Biennial 13 January - 14 April 2025 School of Art Gallery, Aberystwyth University, Wales

Cat Show 15 - 30 March 2025 Thames Side Studios Gallery, London curated by Enzo Marra