Went West

Went over to Glasgow for various reasons; mainly to visit private view of printmakers/painters in the Big Mouth Coffee Co, also to have long driving-down-motorway catchup, gossip, inspirational chat with art college buddy who I have just re-met after a ten year interlude. Great way to fill a journey and fill in all the shared news at the same time. I have been to Glasgow plenty of time in the years I have been in Edinburgh but never to Byres Road area, north-west of Kelvingrove and near the Botanic Gardens; this is where we were headed today. Spent a lovely afternoon wandering vintage shops and checking out cafes, bars and shops; it is a great area for browsing and we found all kinds of little inspirational things. Also ate the largest (and very tasty) piece of carrot cake known to man and drank one of my very rare cups of coffee; one too many and it all goes tits up as I seem to have a lowered resistance to caffeine nowadays.

I was particularly interested in seeing June Carey's work and meeting the artist in question as a) I love her pictures and it is always good to do a bit of hero worship and b) she is one of the organisers of the Art off the Rock function that takes place in Stirling in October. When I finally plucked up courage to talk to her, which my chum quite rightly described as being like trying to build up the pluck to approach the boy you fancied at a school disco), she was very pleasant and interesting on a couple of things I had wondered about in her pictures. Having my own issues with lack of models and being a largely figurative artist I am always interested in how others get around the problem. I was amazed to find that Stephanie Rew, who produces amazingly academic figurative studies with draped kimono fabrics, works largely from photos. June said something similar; how we all essentially use our own face for reference, then warp it a bit so all our paintings don't end up looking like us, but now we need the reference to keep the drawing 'true'. Very true. She also uses her son in the same way I have started to use Stu as a bit of a 'muse' or reference figure; I had noticed the same facial characteristics in a whole bunch of her pieces and somehow imagined that a 'real' artist would have some big studio with models on call and studio lighting.. nope, same as the rest of us. Somehow greatly reassuring.

I liked the emphasis on keeping the drawing 'real' as well because thats where it can go wrong so often I think and gets in a nutshell the difference I see in work that 'works' and just doesn't quite get it.

The private view was actually very strange in that it didn't resemble any other I have been to. Usually the set up is just the same; people standing or wandering around holding glasses of wine and talking about painting or other related subjects. This one was a coffee shop full of people who knew each other sitting at tables in deep conversation about not necessarily art related subjects, not looking at paintings and drinking a variey of beverages; at first we thought we had the time wrong and the cafe was still open. Apparently Chum went to a similar thing in Glasgow the other week at a bar and had a strangely similar experience where no-one seemed to be sure who was there for the promotion and who was just a random customer or wanderer from the street. Must be a Glasgow thing, we decided, like the red tenements I noticed just as I had said how odd it was that all the tenements were actually sandy-ochre like the Edinburgh ones.

My only other geek joy of the day was entering the M8 into the fast lane on the weird junction where it does that, which is the only place I have seen it in this country. Hey, small things...