SKETCH exhibition submission

I recently posted up a link to the forth SKETCH exhibition submission. I decided that I should put a submission in myself and the two sketchbooks I submitted have been accepted. I use sketchbooks in a variety of ways. The first one I sent for consideration was a recent observational sketchbook. These are the books I carry round with me all the time and which I use to keep my looking fresh and to build up a catalogue of images that I often use in the background of much more 'constructed images'. They are all pen, ink and wash drawings. I like to use a very narrow format as it forces me to be compositionally selective. 

Sketchbook 1

The second sketchbook is a much larger one, A3 and is one of the books in which I develop images out of my head. Quite a few images in this sketchbook relate to some ceramics I was making at the time. I also have other types of notebooks, some are used to help me think about composition, others are just rough graspings of vaguely formed ideas. I don't send off for competitions very often, but it's good to know work will be seen. 

Sketchbook 2

The image above is one that came from the ideas that were being developed in sketchbook 2 but which began with an observational drawing of a block of flats, the last drawing taken from sketchbook 1. You can get an idea of what the drawing was like from this view of a recent exhibition. The image of a tower block in sketchbook 1, was drawn while I was also talking to people coming out of the flats. These flats are now used by the city council as temporary housing for migrants coming into Leeds. The stories told to me were of awful migratory experiences and the fact that people felt very lucky to have managed to get some form of roof over their heads, but at the same time they were already having problems with these modernist high rise developments. Residents of high rise blocks it is well known are more liable to stress and mental health difficulties. Their initial concept was based in a modernist optimism as expressed in the work of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, but what worked well when used to design a house for a multi-millionaire or a working space for artists, was a failure as living spaces for ordinary working people. I therefore had not only an observational drawing of a block of flats, but I had the beginnings of an allegorical idea. In sketchbook 2 the initial images are simplified and boiled down into more iconic forms. I had the idea of the building being hollow, (hollow promises of modernism) and dropping from the sky. It eventually also became 'red'. Not just the red of blood, but the red of revolution. The falling man was initially suggested to me by Peter Bruegel's 'Fall of Icarus', a painting in which a tragic moment is unfurling and yet no one notices. Although not photographed, the observational sketchbook was also one of which I used to undertake drawings of the sea. I did a lot of sea drawings, eventually having to come up with a language for the shapes I was seeing. I have blogged on this issue before, so will simply leave you with this link.

I won the first prize for this competition, which was a rare honour for me and a reminder that you cant be acknowledged for the work you do unless you make it public and that often means submitting for exhibitions and that 9 times out of 10 you will be rejected. You need to develop a thick skin and never take it personally when you are rejected, easier said than done I admit, but it has finally worked for me.