It is really good, after such a long period in which exhibition has been impossible, to be able to say that I have confirmed a new date for a show of my work. Although it is a long way ahead there is, at last, sense of a return towards normality.
I will be presenting a selection of my work under the title About Time, at the Ilkley Manor House Museum, between 15 and 22 April next year. The theme of time, in one way or another, has been a connecting thread through a great deal of my work. For some time I have been looking for an opportunity to draw together material from across the entirety of my period as a painter, bringing to the surface this idea in its diverse forms and emphases.
I hadn’t really appreciated, until this event was confirmed, just how much life had been depressed by the isolation regime of the past year. Without concrete possibilities for exhibition there has been a feeling of artificiality about work. It has been a busy and productive year, but behind it all there has been a lurking, ghostly question regarding the purpose of it all.
The rest of this week will probably complete the period of necessary rest into which I seem to have fallen. There has been absolutely no point in driving myself to produce when it has seemed as if this would be simply “busy work”, and my little writing project has been very timely. I am now, as I like to say, “upright and facing forward.”