Previously, I wrote about how I last exhibited some art in 2003. Well that has all changed, 22 years later, after I had some work chosen for an exhibition over the weekend. Admittedly, a digital exhibition for local artists in a shopping centre in Staines, but an exhibition nonetheless! Don’t worry about the fact I’m not that local to Staines. I live in Surrey now, so at least it’s the same county.
The artwork in question is my Hand Study. This was painted in March 2024 during an all day life drawing session at The Horton arts centre and cafe where I do most of most of my painting and drawing nowadays. A converted chapel in the former Epsom cluster of psychiatric hospitals, it’s a great little place and I really look forward to spending around two hours just drawing when I’m there.
Occasionally, they do a full day session from 10am – 4pm where we are encouraged to spend the day painting with a multiple hour pose. I’ve been to a full of these now, and my first one was a disaster. We had a black model and I really struggled with painting his skin tone! On the way out, I folded up all of my paintings and threw them in a bin. Despite being a disaster, and without trying to sound like a self help book, I did learn a lot from my terrible painting that day. If I was using colour, I started to stop thinking about skin colour and started trying to capture the tones reflecting from the models skin instead.
When it came to the next all day session, I went in with a plan and tried to paint the colours and shades I could see reflected from her skin. I also went in with a prepared background colour so I wouldn’t have to think about the background. The final painting was nothing special, but a big improvement and I was very happy with it, it showed promise.
I also made a conscious decision to zoom in a bit and not worry about capturing the full figure, something I took to the extreme on my next all day session. Around this time, I had created some drawings I was very happy with by focusing in on hands and feet, so I decided that was what I would be doing for the all day session. This led to probably the best bit of painting I’ve ever done in my life!
As you can see, the colours in the painting barely reflect the natural colours of a skin tone but I think I successfully captured what I was seeing in from of me. I’m so happy with it that I’ve been sending to a few exhibitions and magazines to get it out there and that’s how it ended up in a shopping centre in Staines.
You might think that after that journey, I’m good at painting now. However, my next all day session was another disaster! That’s painting and drawing for you – just when you think you’ve cracked it, you get dragged back down to earth and have to start again.
Matt Hart 