This week

This week has been a week of flying above the endless, northern hemispherical blanket of thick cloud, whitely shining above, darkly shading below, blue skies and glaring sun seen through small mottled windows. This week has been a week of crossings, the crossing of an ocean and the crossing of half a continent. It has been a week of four airports, uncountable departure gates, suitcases and carry-on luggage. It has been a week with security and immigration and customs and security and boarding passes, body scans, seats by the window and in flight entertainment. It has been a jet lag and head full of the cold week. A week of looking around and seeing more sunshine in the winter than I am used to, almost three more hours a day and coughing my lungs up and sneezing endlessly, nose running, sleep slipping. It has been a week of remembering how to be me when I am not being that other me and taking it easy while my body adjusts to a six hour time difference and sucks down vitamins and herbs and tries to run out a winter cold. This week has been a week when I returned to America, to Arkansas, to Fayetteville. This week has not been a week for art. I'll see what I can do next week!

The rest is just detail

Split, mixed media on panel, 50x76cm / 20x30in

Just like the start to every year in recent memory, this one seems to have arrived rather sooner than is believable. And now we're living in the teens and that seems, well, a bit odd. Do we now have to start being grumpy and staying in beds far too late? I hope not!

Anyway, enough of that silliness. First up, I am very happy to announce that I have completed five new paintings. With the exception of Split, which is shown above, these pieces were all ones that have been in progress for a few months. It seemed for much of that time that I might never find a resolution for these pieces, so that they could take their place as part of my Elegy for the end of an empire series. However I persevered, stopped being precious the parts of these not-quite-right paintings that I liked and managed to make them work.

By a thousand cuts
Mixed media on panel, 30x30cm / 12x12in

Finishing these pieces was a good way to round off a very full year and it was a year that was my most successful as an artist (so far). I'm planning, this year, to build on that success and although I haven't exactly worked out quite how I am going to do that, as far as I am concerned that part is just detail.

Some of the details that are already in place are three exhibitions that will be including my paintings throughout the month of January. As I have already mentioned, I currently have two pieces on show in the Snowflake Salon biennial in Philadelphia and one in the prestigious RSA Open 2012 in Edinburgh. Added to this, soon, will be six pieces in Edinburgh's Union Gallery. Their new exhibition, It's The Little Things, begins this Thursday, with the opening from 6-8pm. Sadly I won't be able to get along to the opening, as I will be 4,300 miles away, once again visiting Fayetteville, Arkansas!

My flight there leaves in a little less than 60 hours. As you might imagine, I have a lot of preparing to do for my trip and so I will bid you adieu now and be back here in a week time, a long way from here! Adieu!