Dates for York 2015

To confirm that we've now agreed dates with the 'According to McGee' Gallery in York for an exhibition of Dave's work. Opening will be on Saturday 21st March and the show will run until Sunday 12th April 2015. A total of three weeks, but covering four weekends and running during the Easter holidays.

We think this is going to be a great way to celebrate Spring. The show, we've agreed, will be called 'Transitions' and will explore some of the small-scale work that Dave created in-between the periods when he was concentrating on his major themes. 

Preparing for the opening

Jackie has been arranging paintings at the See Gallery and came, with her friend Amanda, to meet me at the store and then the studio to select another painting or two to fit unfilled places on the gallery walls. The fact that we have so many of Dave's paintings means that there's nearly always something that will fit, whatever the hole on the wall.

I looked in at the Gallery later. Although nothing was hung, things were placed or suspended and it was just possible to get an impression of what the final display might look like.  I think it will be very interesting, particularly as so much that has been chosen falls outside of Dave's major series such as the early Van Gogh work, or the Byzantium work that took up most of his time in the 1990s. 

We've included a few of the Bestiary paintings that have been stored at Globe Arts studios. These are a revelation to me, as I've only seen them in photographs. These were probably Dave's last major series of oil paintings as his work from 2000 was mainly on paper or, see above, string and nail assemblages. 

With the snow gone..

With the snow gone things are getting back to normal. The pipes have been fixed at the studio. They've been lagged too, and the lesson learned that the stop-cock gets turned off at any hint of sub-freezing temperatures. Meanwhile at the store things have dried out a little, although the work on chipboard still looks vulnerable. However we looked through the work in the store yesterday, with Jackie and Julian (See Gallery), to choose a couple of larger pieces to put into the forthcoming exhibition. 

That done, we moved some of the shaped canvases to the studio and put them up in the new space we've created in what was the attic. It's a wedge-shaped area, quite large, and ideal for triangular pieces such as these. We also dealt with some of the work that has pigeon poo on it. Fortunately this comes off with warm soapy water and a gentle rub. Dave was plagued by pigeons getting into the studio through the roof space; they sat on the hard-to-reach piles of painting and coo-ed at him. There's a story of him catching one and dispatching it bloodily with an axe. 

Otherwise, I need to plan ahead for the See exhibition, and try and tie this in with some of the visitors who want to follow-up the Radio 4 broadcast with a visit. Several different people have mentioned how they feel a film about Dave, his work, his life, the effort to 'save' the paintings, would make a great film. Some tentative progress has been made with this idea....watch this space.

Great feedback

There has been an extremely positive response to yesterday's broadcast about Dave on Radio 4, and this good news has been cemented by having (just) organised a small show of Daves work at the See Gallery in a few weeks time - probably for the beginning of February.

All we need now is for the snow and ice to go so I can begin to ferry work around again. There's things to be framed and, of course, still the vast number of large canvases in store to move back to the studio.