What is in store for 2024?
Planning a first solo exhibition
This year I am going to have my first solo exhibition. It is going to take place in April 2024 and I will be making a formal announcement about it in February. I am excited and a bit scared – in a good way.
Finding out about the show has impacted on my practice, mainly because when I started to plan how to use the space I’ve been offered, I realised I had more wall available than I first realised. Luckily, I have time to make some more paintings and I have proceeded to work a bit differently than I have before to really have a cohesive body of work ready for the exhibition.
What I have done is assess what space I need to fill and then worked backwards from there to choose another set of paintings to create at particular sizes. I will then retrospectively include them in the Fireweed series I made during summer and autumn of 2023 (see this post).
Obviously, these ones have been done retrospectively rather than in time sequence - which is how I normally work. It is interesting to play with how I am able to sort of time travel back to last year while I am painting, but also to notice the inevitable effect on the new paintings of my actually having moved on from then in reality. Emotionally I am in a different place. The series was both about the seasonal growth and decay of willow herb, and the parallel occurrence of a summer love affair I was involved in which is now historical. My work is always influenced by how I’m feeling, but my feelings now are different than they were last year. Technically, my experience and skill level in working with the subject matter has grown, and the increased confidence I have in working at larger sizes is very apparent to me and I think will make the exhibition more visually impactful.
I am well progressed with making the new paintings. Now, I am starting to plan the logistics and organisation of my event. This is my first time organising such an event, although luckily, I do have experience in organising more corporate type events which I think will help. Next month I’ll talk about the practicalities I need to get my head around in order to deliver my exhibition in April.
Finally, a reminder that for 2024: I am going to email my newsletter mailing list when these blogs are posted so you can read in your inbox if you have signed up. You can do that here https://www.helenfeilden.com/newsletter-sign-up . I also message subscribers about paintings for sale and exhibitions, currently about 3-6 times a year.
Have you got plans to show your work? I’d love to hear about it.