Pieces accepted for MOMA Wales!

Well ... some good news...  Both Vivi-Mari and I submitted pieces for the 2011 Tabernacl Open Exhibition at MOMA Wales, and both have been accepted.  I am especially pleased, having been turned down the last time I submitted a painting. (Ironically, the painting this year was unframed, and it turned out the only frame I had which fitted was the one I used for the piece that got rejected a few years ago!  Doubly pleasing since I had it especially made for the exhibition!).

Almost like getting into the Royal Academy ....

The exhibition starts on Monday, but there is a private view and awards presentation tomorrow at midday. No idea whether we're in the running for prizes of course (the money would certainly be handy - 1st prize is £1200) but we'll be along to see what happens anyway.  I think my painting is probably a bit lightweight for the judges, but who knows what sort of madness they may be struck with on the day?

"The Sea of Longing" : Oils & tempera on prepared canvas : Copyright © 2008 by Martin Herbert

The exhibition (http://www.momawales.org.uk/) theme is 'Feeling', which leaves things fairly open to interpretation.  It comes from a quote by Leo Tolstoy from "What is Art" - "Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced". My entry is a portrait of the lovely Semele Xerri of Triple Moon in Builth Wells.  I entitled the piece "The Sea of Longing" to fit the theme.  It's in oils and egg-tempera (Mische Technique) over a pre-prepared canvas giclée-printed with a 3D 'fossil-scape' which I constructed for the purpose.

"Some Things Should Never be Forgotten" : Handmade paper collage : Copyright © 2008 by Vivi-Mari Carpelan

Vivi-Mari's entry is one of her symbolic hand-made collages entitled "Some Things Should Never be Forgotten".  (See more at www.vivimaricarpelan.com)

The exhibition, at Y Tabernacl, Heol Penrallt. Machynlleth, Powys, SY20 8AJ, runs from 18th July to 3rd September and is open Mon-Sat, 10-4.  Go take a look!  Report on the private view coming soon.

PS:  Well, apparently the prizewinners are already up on the website, so no luck there!

Distraction-free blogging

OK - well, time to start finding time, so to speak.  I really need to write some entries, as I would like these pages to become my 'main' website, while I remodel www.spiritvisions.com to be more of a showcase for the oil paintings. So i've decided to try writing entries using DarkRoom (from http://they.misled.us/dark-room).  It's a bare-bones word processor - the idea being that all you have is a blank screen with your writing on - no bells and whistles to distract you - no worrying about format ting or how pretty it looks.  By default it comes up full screen with a black background and green type similar to an old ASCII terminal - the sort of thing I used for writing 'C' code twenty years ago.  I've changed my settings to a nice amber colour text with a clear proportional font, similar to my beloved DEC VT220 terminal from so long ago!  From what I can tell so far (this being the first thing I've typed on it), it works just fine.  Just me and the text... maybe all aspiring writers whould get a copy.  I tried changing the screen background to something a little lighter and found even that was a bit of a distraction.

The psychology is interesting - maybe if we are presented with a whole lot of choices about how our working environment looks and feels, we have some pre-programming which means we are constantly checking that everything is OK.  As soon as the choices are limited, we are more able to focus on the task in hand.  A case in point - my dear wife is doing a lot of blogging at the moment (http://vivimaricarpelan.blogspot.com/) and when making entries dfirectly into blogger, seems to get sidetracked into worrying about whether the header looks good enough, whether the colours are right, etc.  I am sure (previous experience) that I am exactly the same - we're artists - we can't help getting stressed about how things look all the time!  Remove the distractions and the choices and it's not a problem any more.  Well... it's a theory - I'm planning to carry on using Dark Room to edit texts and add the bells and whistles later... we'll see how it goes - maybe an update in a couple of months?