Buses do seem to all come at once!

Several projects and events arrive in one week this Autumn. It is a year since my last newsletter from the Studio Viewing Room, an attempt to connect more directly that began in early lockdown. You can follow the links to each individually below & return here if lost.

This Autumn sees the fruition of a long delayed real world project curating an exhibition for The Model of fellow painter and long time friend Patrick Hall (b.1935) – Beginnings pulls threads from his earliest work in London in the 1950’s through current work in his rural Co Sligo studio, offering an encounter with the 'beginners mind' lying at the heart of his work and life. I have spent each Sunday since the first lockdown with Patrick in his Garden, house and studio. Initially planning this exhibition & keeping company in difficult times, then evolving into the new possibilities of a working dynamic together in his studio workspace – something that rarely occurs in an individual painter’s life. For me it presented a sustained opportunity to deepen my engagement with portraiture during this weekly encounter as he painted, absorbed in new Working Drawings.

Beginnings | Patrick Hall is open from 23rd October extended until to 30th January 2022 with a conversation between us both in the gallery at 2pm on Saturday 6th November (view film online). One of the many resulting portraits of Patrick Hall will also be on show at The National Gallery of Ireland, from 13th November as part of the shortlist for the Zurich Portrait Prize. On Thursday November 4th at 5.30pm I am giving an online presentation for the RHA The Sitting book series which looks at how contemporary artists have used human subjects, social groups and relationships in the formation of their practice. From Friday November 5th at The Ballinglen Museum of Art, in an exhibition curated by Anne Mullee, I am showing my first ever large scale Truckscape painting made in the mobile studio in 1998. It has never been exhibited, and has been wrapped & in the studio for 23 years. The subject is the wondrous cliffs at Benwee Head in Co Mayo.

And finally opening on December 3rd at Art Space Gallery, London is Step and Stair a show curated by Dr Jon Wood and Michael Richardson to celebrate 35 years of the gallery (I first showed there in 1998). Delighted to be showing with one of my painter heroes, the late Leon Kossoff and others such as Basil Beattie and Deanna Petherbridge.

Nick