September came and went so quickly that I didn’t have time to do many of the things I had planned for that month, except that we did book and spend what turned out to be a wonderful holiday in Italy and France. There was little room to consume any art apart from a visit to the Pitti Palace in Florence plus an exhibition “Artistes du Monde” at the Saturday market in Cannes. However, the surroundings coupled good weather served to regenerate and inspire me, I hope!
Since returning, I have to prepare for another Group Exhibition at “La Galleria” (www.lagalleria.org) where two of my works will be chosen for the Autumn Group show out of five which I have submitted for consideration. I decided on landscapes as, for the moment, I believe these will have the best chance of selling and I would like to raise money for charities close to my heart. Four of the five landscapes are on the website and two have been virtually repainted .The Autumn Group Show 2015 at La Galleria starts on Monday 2nd November and runs until Saturday the 7th. The opening times are 10.30am to 7.oopm Monday to Friday and 10.30 am to 4pm on Saturday.
The Pall Mall galleries have a number of very good exhibitions in the pipeline prior to the Group Show – one highly colourful display by David Napp is already half way through its duration in La Galleria, and a Sculpture and Ceramic show starts in the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery (www.roa-galleria.com) on 19th October for one week.
The National Gallery is currently putting on an exhibition of Goya portraits which is expected to draw large crowds. The Spanish artist has always intrigued me because of the several phases of his life during which the paintings and subject matter changed – his portraits as a court painter, the paintings and etchings of the war with Napoleon including the “Disasters of War” series, and his observation of everyday life. Finally there were the dark and disturbing pictures which were probably the result of his feelings of isolation due to the sudden onset of deafness.
As a war artist he pulled no punches and the etchings of the war with the French in the early 1800’s are gruesome and even today, quite shocking, showing carnage and mutilation. I used one of them as a backdrop to one of my paintings “Where is the Love” completed some years ago which shows an injured African child crying during a war torn period in Somalia (Civil War from 1991 – 2006) where starvation and brutality prevailed for years during the fighting.
Today the situation is no different; war, starvation, refugees, cruelty, poverty and death are in the news every day and the images we see on social media and television worldwide show that nothing has changed from what Goya witnessed. The painting was inspired by a song from The Black Eyed Peas written during the Somali fighting in 2003 which has now received 136 million plays on youtube!