Quicksand

Another New Studio

There is a way in which applying for funding sucks the life out of you and makes you perceive your practice as lacking any kind of progress. A lot of applications, anything in ACE projects or DYCP and most other that arrive without fanfare require a well defined project that hasn’t been started yet and won’t be started until the grant is approved. The problem with this is that you spend so much time waiting for the decision, I know you how long you’re going to wait and I know everyone writes that they follow the rules but nobody does, that you can’t summon the energy to do anything once you’ve been declined. Needless to say I didn’t get mu grant funding! Sigh!

The only thing to do is carry on regardless. I’m also getting a bit pissed off with funding providers who will only comment through social media channels. I don’t won’t to be on LinkedIn anymore, I really can’t be arsed with Facebook and obviously I ditched twitter years ago (feels like it anyway). Why they can’t put their posts on a blog on their websites is clearly so technical it is beyond my ken.

Anyway this last two months have been about applying for funding and reaching a point where I couldn’t progress while I awaited an outcome and the subsequent come down. Hence the quicksand, I was already slowing down but the rejection sent me stuttering to a halt. Then there has been the prep for an open studio event next week.

scene notes

At the beginning of the month I had a lot of notes like this one in my notebooks, this one a scene list for woolgathering.

Horse and Fox

Fox

And I decided to build a fox, and then a horse based on the Uffington white horse.

White Horse

Stress Free Living

After painting both and spending a lot too much time working on animating the fox model I realised I needed to build an articulated version of the fox to make the animation easier.

Articulated Fox

In the end I split the body to make the spine articulate.

Fox Drawing

Then made a drawing from the fox model. That will resolve into the scene below.

Fox in the Moonlight

Articulated Fox

I found I would need to build the fox out of something stronger to enable it to stand unaided and for me to change the position.

Flowerbed Drawing 17 03 2025

I also decided to do more work on the flowerbed drawing after it was rejected for the Jacksons Art Prize.

The current state of “Woolgathering” is in these two videos, the second one reduced to five minutes for a competition entry.

The rest of time has been spent framing and hanging small paintings in the studio for the open weekend coming up. The hackwork is always like trudging through quicksand and gives surprisingly few rewards when looking at the slightly older work.

Peppers and Fruit

Primrose, woodland plants, leBrun bather, Dunnock

Small Foxes, Apples, Candles, Interior and Glassware

Prints from large drawings

woodland, pigeons and sparrow, still life.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The February drawings can be seen here

…and the January images here

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to  Instagram each day.