I was first offered to share the studio with Greg Kapka ,a highly skilled artist in the classical sense, portraiture some landscape and highly detailed miniatures ,anyway we shared it for a while, he had the front I had the back.
After a 6/9 months he said he was leaving, and it was up to me if I wanted to carry on, I looked at the sums and took a chance. After a few weeks I thought I ought to use the front as a gallery,and started what is my biggest work to date, the path you take and the choices you make, 85 ft by 20ft, it goes on the floor.
I’m very pleased with it ,it was exhibited at the XChurch Gainsborough,as it’s the only place big enough for it ,they have said I can exhibit it again if I wish ,and photograph it from above this time.
I carried on doing my Arab spring set of paintings, and I went to an exhibition of my friend Richard Devereux at the collection in Lincoln, his work was shoe horned into a small side gallery and lots of vacuous stuff was in the larger space ,all the people there were complaining that this shouldn’t be!
We often meet for a few beers and talk aesthetics ,after a few beers I said we could modify the front of my place into a proper gallery, we worked it out Richard did the work and we split the costs, a very big mention must go to Chris who suggested a very important modification and helped Richard up the stairs with everything, he did a brilliant job, Richard can exhibit here whenever he wants.
We have had a few exhibitions me, Richard, Hannah (Richards very talented daughter), John Byford had a mixed show called inspired and Rafal Grzesiak a superb photographer from Poland. We have requests from some artists to use the gallery ,but their work just wasn’t good enough,and some say, but I only want it for the week end. The minimum let is one month, so if it’s good enough then word of mouth does the rest.
It’s a long walk up those stairs I want any visitors to think it was well worth the effort, no I ain’t going there again!
The next exhibition will be by Hannah Byford, who got a double first in photography from east London university. This will be linked to a teenage cancer charity, as she is recovering from cancer and is only 23. From here it goes to Denmark, then to bad Ganderheim in Germany, then back to the embassy in Skegness, where she was born.