Thursday 5 March 2009

OCA Changeing Lives Exhibition

Yesterday I drove through from the Wild West (of Scotland) to the Erudite East to submit three paintings into an Open College of the Arts (OCA) exhibition at Ocean Terminal, Leith Docks, Edinburgh.
I could have submitted three more recent paintings but I didn't really have anything else created under the auspices of the OCA. These three were done circa 2005 when I last painted anything for the "Painting 2: Finding Your Way" Course, or as I like to term it: "Painting 2: Losing Your Way". I lost all confidence in my painting at that time, although when I look back I now feel perhaps I shouldn't have.
Ce'st la vie, can't re-live time, I can only move forward from here. And these are what I chose to put into this exhibition:



All three are painted in acrylics on paper, and framed in natural wood.

The exhibition space is not ideal, being 3 or 4 stories up on a kind of top-level open gallery of a shopping mall with the paintings displayed high on widely spaced columns. I'll go back there again next week and take some photo's to show you what I mean. Still, I understand it is almost impossible to get affordable gallery space anywhere in our nation's capital city, or anywhere for that matter.
So, I shouldn't complain - I am just happy to have three paintings hanging anywhere in public at the moment without me nailed up there beside them :o{

5 comments:

Melinda said...

Congratulations! You're very brave and I think you've made three very good choices for the exhibit. I'm a serious fan of your figurative work and just love them. But then again, that beautiful, expressive landscape in the middle is simply gorgeous. Ahhh. Very, very good work.

Were you wearing that Stetson hat you mentioned when you drove from the West?!

Thank you for including the link to the Ocean Terminal. It does help to see the environment in which you've displayed your work.

Looking forward to more photos and more gestures of feeling/expression and freedom. You're not losing your way. Your left brain is starting to quiet down so your right brain can have a say, yes?

daviddrawsandpaints said...

I never quite know which is my left and which is my right, Melinda. I sometimes think I'm on an alternating current. And often seem to lose my way. It's good to get feedback from fellow travellers to remind me which road I'm on. Thanks!

And oh, you should have seen me, spurs an' a'. When I arrived in the cauld windy city the piano stopped and they a' dived for cover :o)

Melinda said...

Ha! Ha! Haaa!! Laughing out loud in a quiet house! What great imagery you give.

Whatever you do, don't give up. Follow the expression of the middle landscape, leaning toward the right (brain) and you cannot miss it!

Michael Reid said...

Have you tried the East Kilbride Arts centre for an exhibition?
I enquired there recently.

daviddrawsandpaints said...

Hi Michael, thanks for stopping by.

I hope you are successful with EK Arts Centre, though the last time I enquired I was told it might be a couple of years away!

I held my very first solo show there in April 2000 and was very appreciative of the help the Centre Manager at that time, Paul Eames, gave me.