Juried Shows

I find that November is the season for applying to my favourite open calls, the thought of selection, rejection and what it would be like to be part of a society that chooses, occurred to me and that set in motion the idea for the title and next I had to imagine how to convey the sense of a juried show with my drawing.

JUried Show Two

When setting up a still life I sometimes use a piece of my old work to introduce a different shape or colour. At the moment I am trying to choose what to submit for the Pastel Society. My first drawing around the title was a sneaky way to include both my opened books and a more traditional pastel.

I read a book about Matisse’s practice a few years ago that addressed how he revisited paintings, making more than one of the same motifs. Pieces of the set up remain from Juried Show 1.

Some of what was in front of me was a different scale to what I represented.  I wanted the ‘judges’ to be more animated and that helped me to choose the figurines. The pomegranate juxtaposed with the abstract work says something to me about that tension between figurative and abstract.   

Juried Show One

I challenged myself with that light foreground pattern. There were lots of patterns and colours to contend with. And at lunch time I was  - this close -  to giving up. I removed some things, changed the scale on another and fought on. 

I shared an earlier version on Instagram that was taken when the light was fading.  Today I deepened some colours to look more like the badly lit version.  Art imitates itself imitating itself! Ha.