Rainy day Art Crawl

I have been looking forward to today as it was reserved for one of my favourite passtimes; spending time on me ownsome wandering galleries and staring at art. I had a few not unpleasant chores to accomplish first, including picking up my new shiny business cards (double sided with pictures!) from an industrial estate in Midlothian with a strange coffee shop in a paper warehouse; amazing the things that exist and you would have absolutely no idea unless sent on a goose chase such as today. Found a great wee device (or in fact many of them) which is like a hole punch but punches out wee flowers; there are all kinds of designs, mostly pretty naff, but many useful too. The 'make-and-do-er' in me is very excited by the prospect of stencils and collage in different papers and paints; all adds to the pattern artillery! Should be pretty useful for the wee box canvas angels, although I am thinking of other ideas too now... maybe veering away from being quite as cute and user friendly and letting my dark side loose. But hey, that can have stencils and collage flowers involved no doubt.

One of the shows (Axolotl Gallery) I saw today had some baby box canvases that raised the bar a few notches; Christine Clark - who is showing at the Marchmont Gallery as well; pretty prolific by all accounts. Her work is intricate but very loose and free; much closer to a sketchbook feel which I always love. I think there is a tendency, which I saw a few times at the Art Fair, and I am certainly guilty of, to do an excellent and expressive sketch and then seize up when scaling it up to the heady heights of a canvas. I liked the way all of her pieces held onto that 'stream of consciousness' way of working; a very instinctive feel. Lovely little doll faces and mishmashed colour and texture.

The other artist there that I love is Fiona Wilson; another lady with a love of angels and a very strong figurative painter; painterly painter. I like the 'dark' side of her burlesque ladies and tatooed men (shades of June Carey, or vice versa) and the palette of muted night-time hues punctuated by scarlet nipple covers and irridescent wings. Murky and moody.

Down the hill at Braewell, freshly opened and very pleasing space, I had a bit of an epiphany with Joe O'Brien, who turns out to be one of those painters who don't reproduce well; I have seen numerous reproductions but not many originals. Seeing them en masse in a lovely quiet space was really moving; he is again (for me) a really honest and instinctive artist. You don't get the feeling he is painting out of artifice but directly from his busy mind of ideas; the colours are amazing in the flesh as well which is so often the case. The internet is an amazing tool for dissemination of information and without it I wouldn't be aware of half the art I see, but there is no substitute for the 'standing staring' experience; absorbing the feel and mood of the painting and the painter. Something I will never tire of.

The endless list of shows to see still includes a whole bunch of galleries but enough today; it is now darkening and raining happily outside which is a great cue to whack up the stereo and retreat to the studio; angels are waiting:)