Through time and distance

It is Friday afternoon and I'm taking a short break from preparing for my newest exhibition, Through time and distance, which is a two-person show with Megan Chapman. Megan has ten new paintings in her half of the gallery, while I have ten of my Worlds Apart series in mine, fresh from storage.

Part of my part of Through time and distance,
mid preparations

All of our paintings are now hung and are more or less ready to show. Megan and I, together with Cross Street Arts director Steven Heaton are now making all the other final preparations. Megan is putting the finishing touches to her statement and I should be printing out and cutting our wall labels. Downstairs, Steven has sorted out the nibbles and made sure the gallery is clean and ready for visitors.

With four and a half hours to go until opening, we're well ahead of schedule and far enough away from it not to be nervous yet. Without those nerves, I'm looking forward to getting a chance to talk about my work with interested strangers.

Wish me luck!

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Through time and distance
Cross Street Arts
114-116 The Standish Centre, Standish, WN6 0HQ
17 May – 14 June

Re-awakening

Er-hm. Hi. Hello. Um, is this on? Ah. Right. So… art. Right.

I started a painting this week. No, seriously, I did. It wasn't exactly what I had planned, nonetheless I made art and that is to be celebrated (I'm told). Yes? Yes. Good.

Elsewhere are is out in the real world, where it ought to be.

Never better
Mixed media on postcard, 10x15cm

A few days ago, The Rock Trust's 2013 postcard exhibition opened, which has two pieces by me in it. All the proceeds from the event, which is an auction, go to the charity and with the very central location of the gallery in Edinburgh, there is no excuse for missing it. You don't want to miss seeing the only two new paintings I've finished this year (so far)!

Tomorrow night, far away across the Atlantic and over half of the North American continent, Megan Chapman and my joint paintings will be going on show at the lovely Boswell Mourot Fine Arts in Little Rock. The show is titled Arkansas artists and their works, which worryingly seems to imply that I have become adopted by that arboreal state. (Eek!) I'd very much like to be there to see it, especially since some of the pieces will be having their commercial gallery debut! If you're out and about in central Arkansas this month, please stop by and let me know how it looks.

Lastly, a week from today, I will be joining Megan at the opening of our two-person show Through time and distance at Cross Street Arts in Greater Manchester (which is confusingly Up North, while being down south from where I live). Megan is hard at work putting the finishing touches to her new pieces, while I am going to be bringing most of my Worlds Apart series out of storage for a whole new audience! I can't wait to see how they look together. I hope to see you there!

Philadelphia, Little Rock, Edinburgh

Don't let them rob you of the only thing you know
and You know your problems ain't exactly new
at 110 Church Gallery in Philadelphia
 © 2013 Heavy Bubble

This week, I have seen photos from the two exhibitions my work is currently featured in. On the west side of the Atlantic, the lovely people from Philadelphia's 110 Church Gallery are very good at documenting their shows. I've borrowed one of their photos from their current show Natural Selection for this post. It is really nice to see my paintings in their space, as well as the people attending the exhibition opening. You can see more here – including my name on the window!

Below the surface at
SSA Annual Open
© 2013 Pat Bremner

On the east side of the Atlantic, my mum visited the Society of Scottish Artists Annual Open Exhibition 2013 – apparently their 116th such exhibition – and sneakily grabbed a couple of photos of my piece, 'Below the surface' on the wall there (thanks mum!). Quite why the SSA and the RSA before them both think that my work looks best next to the floor is a something of a mystery to me. Not that this strange coincidence matters, because I'm thrilled to have been selected from among what I believe have been record high numbers of entrants, to be shown in two such prestigious exhibitions. I can't wait to soon see this one with my own eyes!

We took the quiet roads
Mixed media on canvas, 76x101cm
© 2013 Megan Chapman & Stewart Bremner

Also this week, Megan Chapman and went on a two hundred mile journey to deliver all of our remaining joint paintings (and three more of Megan's) to Boswell Mourot Fine Art, a lovely gallery in an upmarket area of Arkansas' state capital, Little Rock. There are only eight of our joint paintings remaining for sale in the world and, as hard as this is to believe, this will be their first time in a commercial gallery! We've got high hopes for their future! (I think, possibly, this also means that I am maybe, sort of, kind of, represented by a gallery in the US – however I might be over egging the pudding now!)

East Davidson
Cyanotype on paper, 6x6cm

I've been in Arkansas for two months on this trip, two months that have flown by. When I arrived here, I intended to take it easy, after a very full and busy year and I absolutely managed to do this: not only have I not so much as lifted a paint brush, I hardly even posted here. I did, however, manage to fit in some analogue photography experiments, shooting on film every day of my visit, hoping to document the typical American town that I once again found myself in. I even tried making some tintypes and a series of cyanotype prints, including the one here.

In the middle of next week, I will be returning to Edinburgh and, once I do, I suspect that I had better knuckle down. It may well be time to get serious (again)!

Sales, a market and Picasso and the Modern British

See our joint pieces fly!

Last weekend, Megan had her yART sale, that featured all of her available work and our joint pieces, as well as the small selection of my work. Much like the summer's opening East Prospect exhibition, the turn out was not as high, however those who came very much appreciated and engaged with the work. This, truly, is the most important thing for any exhibition, from an artist's viewpoint. We want people to see our work and to think about it and to talk about it!

From four thousand miles
Mixed media on board, 12x12" / 30x30cm
© 2012 Megan Chapman & Stewart Bremner.
Sold

Very excitingly two of Megan and my joint paintings sold! This means that from the fifteen paintings we created earlier in the summer, only four are now left for sale! This is brilliant news for us and great validation of the work we created. I know that I am not alone in wanting to thank everyone who has supported Megan and I throughout our adventures and especially those who have bought our work.

You can find out more about Megan and my joint paintings here. Currently four pieces from A place called home and six from A question of chemistry are still available to buy.

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Coming soon to the Art Market

Silent reply
Mixed media on paper, 5.25" x 8.5"

Out of the Blue's quarterly Art Market grows closer, taking place on Saturday 20th – only eight days away! I have been preparing for it over the past week, working out which paintings and other work I will take with me. I am planning on taking a few of my smaller Worlds Apart paintings, my remaining small paper pieces (one shown left), my car illustrations, my camera prints and my pop art greetings cards. With all of that on show, I think I might well have quite a bright and diverse stall!

I have also decided to create some new paper paintings. These pieces, which are currently still inside my mind, will be in keeping with my most recent work. While some of those pieces (you can see most of them here) deal with some dark ideas and themes, I believe that in a simpler form and on paper, I will be able to create some dynamic and eye-catching work – expect to see a preview here next week!

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The Britons are coming!

Last weekend I took a trip with a friend to visit the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, to see their Picasso and the Modern British exhibition. This is again one of the gallery's larger exhibitions, covering more than one floor and encompassing a multitude of works.

Picasso was, of course, the big name draw and, on a sunny Sunday, the gallery was surprisingly busy. Naturally he was well represented in the show, with a fine range of the work he produced before the Second World War. It was educational to see some of his early post-impressionist pieces, as well as be able to see his development as an artist over this period.

For me, however, it was the modern British work that was the most eye-opening. For a long time, little of this work has merited much attention, so it is very welcome to see this selection in a major museum. While I understand the reasoning behind tying all of the work to Picasso (it's the money, naturally), at the same time I felt that the exhibition could have easily, and perhaps more successfully, stood on its own without him. Of course, it would almost certainly have created a far quieter gallery last Sunday and there's no money in that and out galleries do have to be careful, now that the nasty bastards are in charge again.

Composition
Wyndham Lewis, 1913
Pen, watercolour and graphite on paper
© Wyndham Lewis and the estate
of Mrs G A Wyndham Lewis

The first of the British contingent I was struck by was Wyndham Lewis. I have been peripherally aware of his work since undertaking a series of Vortographs a few years ago. As the prime instigator of Vorticism (seen as a British offshoot of Cubism), I have to admit that there was some sense in showing his work along with Picasso's. I did not, however, confuse the two styles, finding something engagingly graphic in Lewis's approach that I'm not sure I've ever seen in Cubism. However, perhaps I am simply being patriotic (although this seems rather unlikely). 

Later in the show, a few rooms showed work that is seen as a reaction to a tour of the United Kingdom made by Picasso's Guernica, in the year's following that great painting's completion. (Apparently its last showing on this island was in a Manchester car showroom!) Here I found an artist I had not previously encountered, Graham Sutherland. The works of his shown, made in the years around the Second World War, were sinister pieces, sharp and angular and with hints of foreboding. They were reminiscent in some ways, of Francis Bacon's ‪Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion‬, which was the splendid centre piece in the next room.

Green Tree Form
Graham Sutherland, 1940
Oil on canvas
British Council Collection
© The Estate of Graham Sutherland

By the time we reached the upper floor of the exhibition, I was beginning to suffer from art fatigue. There was so much to see in the show, that it became impossible to truly take it all in during one visit. This left me with the feeling that the exhibition was simply too big. Of course large public galleries regularly show more work than this, however in a curated exhibition such as this, there is more onus to pay attention to every artwork and read every wall card (there were a lot of wall cards). It made for an exhausting visit, not in any way helped by the unnecessarily dim rooms which made reading any wall card a strain on the eyes (not to mention the wayward shadows intruding across many of the paintings).

While I would certainly consider a second visit, to return to the pieces I enjoyed and pay attention to the areas I ended up bypassing, at £10 a ticket I really do not think that this is likely to happen. By all means, take this fantastic opportunity to see a unique collection of modern British paintings, just be sure to pace yourself (and take a head torch!).

On the wall

On the evening of July 10th, the artist's reception for Megan Chapman and my new body of work, A place called home, took place at Springdale's Arts Center of the Ozarks. While the evening was a touch quieter than we had anticipated, we nonetheless had a really lovely night. Around forty to fifty friends, family and patrons came out on a random Tuesday night, to look at our art in person and to talk to us.

We both spent the two hours of the reception in countless conversations, both about life and more specifically about our art. I love sharing my (and our!) work and there is little that can compare to speaking with a patron about a painting I have made, or in this case we have made. It is particularly great when someone gets what we have been trying to do with the work and also when they have their own, equally valid ideas about what we have made.

Our show, named A place called home after the series of paintings, is in the Arts Center of the Ozarks until July 27th. We arranged and hung the show ourselves and are really pleased with how it looks on the wall. This will be the only time that the full series will ever be shown together in public. If you're in Northwest Arkansas, or even eastern Oklahoma or southern Missouri, make sure you don't miss it.

For those of you further afield, you might not be able to see it in person however you can see the full series here.

Uncharted territory

To most people, the art world appears as an exclusive clique, where one cannot simply enjoy a piece of work, one must exhaustively explain why, using the longest words available; a world where one must understand what the direct expressivity of artistic material is; a world where a seemingly discarded piece of everyday junk becomes art when placed on a plinth or a gallery floor. It is not a welcoming world and one must pass stringent entrance exams to gain admittance, or else as a visitor carry the fear of possible public mockery.

This preconception of the art world is one that appears to have gathered strength over the past century as art, or at least its cutting edge, has moved steadily away from strictly representational art.

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway
Oil on canvas, 1844, JMW Turner
Bequest to the National Gallery, London

Through the history of art, paintings have been almost always representational, meaning that their subjects were of something identifiable – a flower, a nude, a landscape and so on. While the more cunning artists would at times bury meanings within their paintings, for the mass of viewers it was quite clear what the painting was of.

In the nineteenth century, when artists such as Joseph Mallord William Turner and the French Impressionists stepped away from strict representation, a degree of explanation was needed to educate viewers to a whole new way of not just painting, but of looking at the world. In the twentieth century, when representational art was overtaken by non-representational art, the radical ideas of the Impressionists were advanced ever more radically. In this new and non-representational art, there was no longer a clearly defined subject and so longer explanations were required. Or perhaps the artists, curators and other full-time denizens of the art world simply felt them necessary, in order to justify themselves.

Over the course of the previous century, those explanations became longer and longer. With time, art moved on again, from the non-representational with an explanation to, more or less, simply the explanation. This two-century move from what once may have been perceived as little more than a pretty picture, to something with almost no aesthetic appeal and a long explanation, has served to turn art into an intellectual pursuit. As such, its potential mass appeal has been considerably lessened. This may be why the popularity of artists such as Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh continues, since arguably they were among the last cutting edge artists to paint more or less representationally.

My bed
Mattress, pillows, linens, objcets
© 1998 Tracey Emin / Saatchi Gallery

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, as western affluence rose, so to did the disconnection between art and the public. Most people's experience of contemporary art became little more than reading in disbelief an article about the latest Turner Prize winner, or else about the escapades of a previous winners-turned celebratory millionaire.

Yet in the past few years, western affluence has been in a steady decline. This has helped reveal that many other institutions, most notably politics, banking and the media, seem to be reaching a similarly great point of disconnection with the public. For these institutions change has become not just something to be hoped for but something that would seemingly have become unavoidable. In the world of art, change appears already to be underway.

As the traditional methods for the dissemination of knowledge about art have lost either their credibility or their funding, and as with so much of our lives, the internet has taken over. Here is a quiet revolution, where much of the media and countless galleries who continue to peddle artistic alienation are being left for dead.

Dissolution chemistry
Mixed media on paper
© 2009 Megan Chapman

Through social media sites and online market places, the barriers that many saw between themselves and art are being pierced. So to in the real world, friendly faces are replacing stern and consequently, more and more people are becoming aware of the value of having art in their lives. It is a realisation that I experienced a few years ago, when I bought my first piece of art. I can vividly recall the experience.

I saw a painting I liked in an Etsy store, made by someone I knew only slightly (then) through a social media site. I liked it and realised that since it was a small paper piece, I could afford to buy it. This simple access to original art was a revelation. I saw how easy it was to own art and quite possibly always had been. For the life of me, I could not understand why I had never bought any before. So it was that with one or two mouse clicks, I became the owner of a piece of original art. In the time since then, I have bought (and traded) several more pieces of art and now have a collection that includes the work of more than ten artists. Buying art, I now realise, is like buying anything else. There is no great drama to it, no need for endless pondering or justification. If I see a piece that I like, I can simply buy it, or else negotiate payments or a trade. It is simple knowledge that I wish I had possessed for so much longer.

While most of these pieces in my collection are small, they are indistinguishably real and original art and they are on my walls. To sit among them is an indescribably pleasant feeling. I know each of the artists who made the work and so feel a personal connection to the pieces. I also feel that here, finally, is something permanent in my life, something that will with luck out last me and that perhaps some future generation will hold and enjoy and know that it was part of my life.

Uncharted territory
Mixed media on panel
© 2012 Megan Chapman
& Stewart Bremner

Paintings may still seem to many an unaffordable luxury, something only for those in the know. Happily this is an attitude that is changing. Although few of us might have the affluence we once did, we are now making our purchases armed with more knowledge and eager to shop ethically. Maybe now, rather than considering the next electronic gadget from a multinational corporation, a corporation that may well be both eroding your rights and employing semi-slaves, it is time to buy a painting from a real, live artist, an artist who will almost certainly be grateful because you have bought them more time to be an artist.

Satisfaction

In a few days time, Megan Chapman and I will be delivering our new body of work for exhibition at the Art Center of the Ozarks. Creating the series has been a hard job and one that was not made any easier by the heat of the Arkansas summer. Up close against the the work in the confines of the studio, it was hard to get a sense of what we had been making. However, tonight as we varnished all fifteen of the paintings, we began to realise just what we had created and a sense of satisfaction began to manifest. Time and again we found ourselves commenting on how much we liked the particular piece being varnished. It was a good feeling.

We are nomads
Mixed media on board, 12x12" / 30x30cm
© 2012 Megan Chapman & Stewart Bremner.

Originally, we had intended to make more than the fifteen 12x12" pieces that we are showing. Knowing the space that the exhibition was to be held in, we originally estimated that somewhere between twenty to thirty pieces would be needed to aqequately fill it. Yet as the body of work progressed and its complexities revealed themselves, we realised that making more than the fifteen would needlessly complicate the series and that was something that these intricate pieces would not suffer. We further realised that by showing this smaller number of paintings, each piece will be given more impact, pulling patrons deeper into each of their universes. Quite simply, it will demonstrate clearly our conifdence in this work.

In a few days time, we will be hanging these pieces at the Art Center of the Ozarks. It hardly seems like any time has passed since we started this work and yet it has been almost two months since we took delivery of our expertly-crafted panels from local makers Perrodin Supply Co. It seems hard to believe what we have created in that time, pieces that neither of us could have created individually.

While a place called home might not exist for us temporally, a place called home absolutely exists when we paint.


A place called home
Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
July 3-27, Art Center of the Ozarks, Springdale, Arkansas
Reception: Tuesday July 10th 6-8pm  
For more information visit chapmanbremner.blogspot.com

Not just for one night only

The air was cooler and lovelier than we could have hoped for at five o'clock, when the East Prospect exhibition began last night. The air was also full of the magical sound of Sun Boxes. It was the perfect beginning to what became a wonderful evening.

The front room with works by Megan Chapman,
Jennifer Libby Fay and myself.

In one funky and (what I'm told is a) small house in the historical district in Fayetteville, Megan Chapman, Jennifer Libby Fay and myself hosted an international art exhibition. The show was comprised of more than a hundred pieces of art, including abstract paintings, textile works, photography, illustrations and multimedia works. All of this was fitted into the five rooms on the main floor of the house and was seen by a constant stream of friendly faces. Meanwhile Craig Colorusso was outside, moving his Sun Boxes around the yard to keep them in the patches of sun that passed through the surrounding trees, so that they could sing to the neighbourhood.

It was a fun night, full of conversations that were carried through the house on light summer breezes. As an artist, much of my night was spent talking about my art, which is something I love to do. However, I was also able to talk about other's art and share it with friends and with new acquaintances, which was a thrill.

In the back room with my paintings
and photography by Christian Demare,
Thomas Petillo and Craig Munro.

We had a great time and so, by all appearances, did out guests. It was such a good time, in fact, that we decided we really should repeat the experience. So for those that missed the show, or those who couldn't get enough, East Prospect will be back on Saturday 9th June from 11-4pm. If you're in Northwest Arkansas, you really shouldn't miss it.

Thank you everyone who made it along and everyone that I hope we see tomorrow. You've all been amazing and it has been a joy to feel a part of the community again.


(And here are those lovely Sun Boxes)

East Prospect

The good thing about Fayetteville is that it is an easy place to make your own opportunities. There are a lot of creative spirits in this town, which makes for a receptive audience if you have the nerve and will power to try something. By all accounts, last week's experimental theatre piece, Alley 38 by the Artist's Laboratory Theatre, found that audience. Sold out on every night, not only was it a financial success if was also an artistic one. As an audience member/participant on one evening, I had a wonderful experience and look forward to the troupe's future work.

East Prospect exhibition
Thursday 7th June

In less than a week, artists Megan Chapman, Jennifer Libby Fay and myself will be having our own experiment. Since the ignominious demise last year of Fayetteville's most successful commercial gallery, the town has been left with a gaping hole in its cultural scene. For one night only, we have decided to fill that hole. However, we are not filling it in quite the expected manner: rather than staging our show in the usual stark, white-walled box, we have decided to have our exhibition in a residential home!

It seemed, when we first thought of it, a radical plan. Yet the more we thought about it, the more sense it made. All too often in the past we heard visitors complain "It looks so good against the white wall, but my walls are (such and such) colour" or "I don't have the space for art on my walls" and that was the end to their experience of art, art that may well have enriched their lives for years to come. By moving art away for those usual stultifying enclosures, we believe that it will make for a more personal and enjoyable experience. Not only will patrons be able to feel closer to the art but they will also see it in a real life setting.

Added to this, as artists and curators, we have access to a wide range of art and artists. It eventually became clear that not showing Fayetteville the kind of art it has come to expect would be the only wrong thing to do.

Our exhibition, East Prospect, will take place on First Thursday, June 7th and will feature a wide selection of art from national and international artists; artists from Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, England, France and Scotland. On show will be abstract paintings from Megan Chapman, Steven Heaton and myself; fabric art from Jennifer Libby Fay; illustrative art by myself; digital and analogue photography from Thomas Petillo, Christian Demare, Craig Munro, Rob Kedward, Steven Heaton and myself; multi-media art from John Spurgeon and, not least, the fantastic solar-powered installation, Sun Boxes, by Craig Colorusso. All of the work, Sun Boxes aside, will be available to purchase and take home on the night and is priced to suit everyone from the serious art collector to students.

We believe Fayetteville deserves, and needs, to see this art. It has been too long since there was a show of this quality in town. I'm tremendously excited about the exhibition and I can't wait for it to happen. I hope to see you there!

Questions and an answer

Fifteen under-paintings Megan Chapman & Stewart Bremner

In a little over a month, Megan Chapman and I will be having an exhibition of new works at the Art Center of the Ozarks, titled "A place called home".

Megan and I have a home each, spaced four and a half thousand miles apart and we have both spent many months visiting each other's homes. Neither of us having planned to ever engage in such a long-distance relationship, there was never an expectation that not knowing where home was would ever arise. That was, of course, before the internet changed things, leaving us at a point where the places we once called home are no longer quite as clear in our minds as previously they had been. Where, then, is our home?

Given that this has become such a prominent, if unanswered question, and also that both of our recent bodies of work are so autobiographical, it therefore seemed entirely apt that we should title our next show with this in mind. Due to the nature of exhibition scheduling, these considerations, and the title that sprang from them, took place some time ago.

Now here we are, back in the sticky heat of an Arkansas summer and we have a lot of painting to do. Already we have began fifteen pieces, all of them underpaintings that contain a mix of shape, colour and texture. As these pieces progress, we are faced with squaring up the work we have began with the title we have given the show. This seems a difficult task, although one that as abstract artists we have faced before.

The problem has led to several discussions and not a few hours of missed sleep. In the heat and in the stress, the solution was not forthcoming. And then the answer occurred to me, the answer that is always the answer and yet is one that seems somehow to be easily forgotten. The work will conform to the title because the idea behind the title is so very much at the forefront of our minds that in our mark-making, we cannot help but reflect it. This is to hark back to the idea of éciture automatique, that I touched on almost a year ago. Basically, if we relax and just keep painting, we should find our way to a cohesive (and hopefully great) show.

Now to put that into practice…

A game of many hats

Sometimes, the days just slip by, however this week it has felt like they have been roaring by, leaving me spinning and disoriented in their wake. It seems only a day since I started what will be the last painting in my current series, yet when I look at the calendar, I see it has been five days. Five days! How can that even be possible? I've not touched it in all that time, although I have been busy preparing all my other paintings for the show, as well as ordering the last of the supplies that I will need.

In the middle of the week, in order to calm myself, to try to smooth the eddies, I made a list of Things To Do. One part of it dealt with my life, which has largely been on hold while I have been immersed in this work, the other part listed what I still need to do for the upcoming exhibition (Worlds Apart with Kevin Low, Union Gallery, April):

1. finish the last painting
2. pick up five new cradles
3. varnish the last three paintings
4. put hanging on the last five large paintings
5. photograph all of the paintings (some of them for the third time!)
6. create titles for the last three paintings
7. write a statement
8. sign and title all of the paintings
9. make a list of people to invite to the opening
10. create and send out invites (do you want to come?)
11. add a new series page to my website
12. add a résumé page to my website
13. add the new series to my Facebook page
14. put out a press release (and find addressees for it – are you one or do you know one?)
15. work out prices for my paintings
16. send statement and painting list to Union Gallery
17. make opening night Facebook event and send invites
18. deliver paintings to Union Gallery
19. make a book of the series
20. update accounts to cover expenses incurred in making the series
21. tidy up the studio

The above list has fifteen more items on it than the one I wrote midweek and these are just what I need to do before this exhibition. Admittedly, it is the biggest exhibition of my career to date, however it is not the only one (see below). As you can see, being an artist means more than just making art. A lot more. I am also a picture framer, photographer, writer, designer, accountant and cleaner at the very least. I also need to be an entrepreneur, to do my own press releases and to provide my business with motivation.

Doing all of this and doing it well is an enormous challenge. Happily, these days it is a challenge that I relish and as with most things, I expect that the more I do it, the better I will get at it (even if the stress levels don't diminish)! I had better get on with it!




I thought I would find you here

We took the quiet roads
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed media on canvas, 30x40"
$1,350

In all of the rush and excitement in making my new series of paintings, I have been somewhat remiss in mentioning another exciting event that is taking place right now. Megan Chapman and I are having a joint show through March and April in Arkansas! This is the first time that we have shown both joint work and solo pieces together and I just wish that I could transport myself to Bentonville for a few hours to have a look at it. If you are in the area, please do check it out (and take some photos if you can, I'm dying to see it!).

Don't worry…

Since early last year, I have been exploring abstract painting as a means of self expression. All the work I have created since then has been, in one sense, a snapshot of a particular moment in time and the state of my mind at that moment.

When I began my current body of work for April's exhibition at Union Gallery, I had in mind an over-arching theme that would intersect with that self-expression ideal. That theme was borne on my flight home from Fayetteville in November. Leaving behind Megan there and heading back home, I had a feeling of being torn between two geographical locations and between two possible futures. This, I decided, could become a loose framework around which my work could be built.

In late December when I finally put paint to panel, that torn feeling still had coherence. However the feeling had diminished somewhat with the sad abandonment of the Fayetteville Artist's Alliance, which had been the town's main attraction, after Megan. The torn feeling was lessened even further, when Megan herself left Fayetteville to visit Edinburgh.

With the loose framework that the torn feeling had provided now largely missing, I was left floundering. I knew that my paintings must mean something to me, that I needed the initial meaning as a connection, as a sort of internal badge of worth because without it I can all too often end up feeling as if I am simply moving paint around, making a decoration, not art and that is not enough for me.

Unfinished, untitled, not even dry yet, at 24x24"
this is the largest painting I have worked on
for months. (© Stewart Bremner 2012)

Yesterday, I set aside my worries, about both my self-imposed (false) framework and moving onto a large panel and began my biggest solo painting since July. I simply let myself move and, I think, maybe, that it is going to be one of the strongest pieces in my show.

In retrospect, my worrying has been a bit silly. I find my meaning, that internal badge, examining my mind state in the moments of creation. The idea that I was going to use one over-arching theme as a framework clearly acts against the spontaneity that my approach benefits from. It is little wonder, then, that I managed to tie myself up in knots.

With fourteen small pieces in a state of mostly finished and five more large panels to work on, my half of April's exhibition is coming along nicely. I've made some of the best paintings of my career and I've enjoyed the process of painting more than I even have before. If I can keep that in mind and stop bloody worrying, the show is going to be a killer!

A matter of distances

After the storm
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 40x30"

Seven days after completing 'A question of chemistry' with Megan Chapman, I was hoping to review the series, to have had the time to stand back and appraise what we had achieved in three intensive weeks of painting. Somehow, today, I find that I have both too much distance and yet not enough.

Physically, I am now four and a half thousand miles from the paintings. I do not know when, or indeed if, I will see them again. (Which, I must point out, is not negativity – I do hope to work in Megan's studio again one day, however perhaps by that day the whole series will have sold!) Returning to look them over, to let my eyes drink in their complexities is no longer possible and, as is always the case, photos of paintings never do them justice. In the flesh, paintings have an almost indefinable quality about them that reproductions invariably lack.

On the other hand, in the week that has passed, I have returned across six time zones, slept intermittently and am rather unsettled to be home alone. I have not yet found the mental space needed to stand back and look or, rather, think about what we achieved in our collaboration.

All of the nine paintings in our series are now available to view over on Facebook. Please do take a look over there and let Megan and I know what you think.

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This coming Thursday, 9th June, sees some of my work go on show in Union Gallery's second birthday exhibition. A private preview is taking place from 6-8pm that night and I will be there if you want to come along and ask me questions. I'd be more than happy to see some familiar faces!

A question of chemistry

The collaborative series Megan Chapman and I have been working on really took off this week. Initially, our collaborative process was more tense than enjoyable and we had doubts about the project. Sensibly, we took a few days away from Megan's studio, during which time we talked over our painting process and agreed a more relaxed set of rules. We returned to the studio with some trepidation, yet were more than pleasantly surprised by what we found there: the first piece we had painted was revealed as being very nearly finished. It was so much better than we had hoped for, in fact quite a complex piece and, after making only slight additions to it, immediately hung it in the Vault Gallery at the Fayetteville Underground, where we sat and looked at it for a long time.

Fired up by the success, we began another painting and, over the week, completed three further pieces, with a one more piece in progress. The newer paintings are bolder than the first painting, reflecting the more confident and relaxed approach we have taken to them. Each one is a curious blend of our two hands, with hints towards both of our styles for those with sharp eyes.

This week has been some of the most enjoyable experiences I have had in a studio. It has truly been a collaborative process, where often four hands are moving over the canvas and, at times, two brains are acting as one.

We are planning to a further four or five pieces in this series, which we have named A question of chemistry. Come back next week and see how things progress!

We took the quiet roads
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 30x40"

A strange currency
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 40x30"

A fearless humming across the wires
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 30x40"