The long goodbye, oil on canvas, 2020, 91 x 71 cm
It’s a real pleasure to be able to send you my newsletter again!
After our long enforced hibernation, which has been by times and in different ways hard for all of us, the gallery world is now, after a rich diet of virtual shows, also opening its doors with real McCoy. It feels like a breath of fresh air, especially as most of my shows this year have either been postponed or cancelled and long time planning is still on uncertain footing.
Lockdown has been for many artists a highly creative time and luckily I have been in isolation in my studio. Studios are of course not just a place of making things but a safe space for reflection, research or associative imagining.
Turning inward into imagination is something artists do naturally but I found that during lockdown my inner world was overriding the outer one and that emotional events from the past were being transformed into stories of the present. Inevitably classics, like The Pest by Camus or Boccaccio’s The Decameron, came to mind.
Imagine therefore my delight when the art writer Laura Gascoigne invited me to be part in of a timely, virtual, exhibition on Decameron she was curating for Flowers Gallery.
She knew I had been working on a series of paintings, which, like in like Boccaccio’s masterpiece, told about ‘the shadow of death and our human defenses against it ’
The Long Goodbye, a title taken from a book by Raymond Chandler, refers to the loss of a loved one, while at the same time discovering that within this sense of loss comes a freedom to love that other person unreservedly again. As good as a defense against the shadow of death as can be!
At the same time I will also be showing some large prints in The Desire of Looking with my gallery The Queeste Art, this group exhibition will be the first since they opened their doors again.
More updates will follow but for now lets enjoy what we can, both online and in actual visits.
Please take good care of yourselves
6 July – 9 August 2020
Decameron, Curated by Laura Gascoigne
www: Flowers Gallery online [from 6 July onward]
11July – 9 August 2020
The Desire of Looking
A dialogue between works by Chantal Grard (BE), FraukeWilke, Lisa Spillebeen (BE), Frances Aviva Blane (UK), Ulyana Gumeniuk (UK/UKR), Sam Dillemans (BE), Daniel Enkaoua (ES/IL) , Isidoor Goddeeris (BE), Nele Boudry (BE), Marcelle Hanselaar (UK/NL), Reniere and Depla (BE).
De Queeste Art
Trappistenweg 54
8978 Abele/Watou, Belgium
Open Fri-Sat-Sun 2-6pm and by appointment
www: De Queeste Art