...But Now Am Found.

On Monday last I met Simon Glover, one half of the soon-to-open Found Gallery on the High Street, Dunbar. 


In between painting and putting up shelves he agreed to take a couple of the Price of Fish paintings I blogged about before, which is good, as it looks like it's going to be a very fine gallery - it's a "good space" (as they say) and there were some exciting-looking art works ready to be put on display.


The other half of the venture is Amy Christie, a very fine jeweller who does beautiful work in glass  and seems to have a healthily well-developed interest in rusty things.


The Found Gallery is opening on Saturday 9th July; a web site is on the way and I'll link to it when it's up and running.


I haven't any pictures of the gallery itself but here's a splendid poster:

Rust Never Sleeps 6: St Amant.

St. Amant, oil on canvas, 16" x 20".

The St. Amant, registered in Ballantrae, and operating mostly out of Peterhead, I think. Less baroque than usual and more sternly industrial but I quite like the simplicity of this one.

St. Amant, a quick Wikipedia reveals, is patron saint of vinegrowers, innkeepers, brewers, vintners, bartenders, and , oddly, Boy Scouts. Pissed ones, presumably.

In some exciting rust-related news, I've had some paintings accepted for display in Number Four gallery in St. Abbs.

I had a quiet snout around while Laura was giving them some of her jewellery (out on display now, and looking very fine) and I'm both surprised and delighted to be accepted there. They have some very, very splendid work; glass, ceramics, paintings, bronzes, jewellery, and it's all beautiful. They're having a Spring re-hanging soon so some of my work will be up and visible then. Can't quite describe how happy it made me: I took along nine paintings, thinking they'd choose a couple, and they took the lot. I got treated like a Proper Artist. A little bit of validation goes a long way.

Number Four gallery's website can be found here, and again, a big thanks to them.

Quietly Pleased, Anyway

Rejoice, oil on board, 18" x 24".

An appropriate sort of title, as I got this accepted yesterday for the Open Exhibition at the Gymnasium gallery in Berwick. It's title of 'Open' is surely intended to be ironic as finding out about how to enter involves dropping hints with people who know people, picking up envelopes on park benches and finally meeting with a shadowy figure in a windy doorway who is initially cagey but eventually slips an email address, typewritten on a sheet of paper, into your hand and when you look up he has vanished.

Anyway, it's another picture of rust, a combination of a couple of boats in Eyemouth harbour. We had a day at Eyemouth a few weeks ago (the seal really is blind, I discovered. I sceptically thought it was just a ruse by the mackerel vendor) and I stocked up on some splendidly weathered letters and numbers. The 'Rejoice' was up on the slipway and I only had the normal lens on so I could only get a very cropped, pixellated image. I went back the next day with the telephoto lens, having decided to paint it, only the buggers had got there before me and it was pristine again: