I’ve been puzzling for a little while about how I am going to cope with a rather congested period in my exhibiting programme later in the spring. I am committed to quite a big solo exhibition at the Manor House Museum in Ilkley, over the Easter period. At the same time, however, knock-on effect of the building improvements at the South Square Centre in Thornton has resulted in my show there running concurrently with it. I want both exhibitions to have a kind of thematic coherence. So I have been wondering how I can identify two themes which will enable me to offer two separate shows without each competing with the other for material. I decided today that I have the answer.
Whereas the Ilkley event will attempt to offer a rather general review of the development of my painting, under the title About Time, I will use the South Square show to focus specifically on the numerous pictures I have done of Almscliff Crag. I was staggered to discover just how many of these I have done over the past twenty years or so. Consequently the title I am toying with at the moment will be something like Enduring Obsession. The space is not very large, so it will be readily possible to create a “salon-style” feeling of plentiful choice, hanging a very large proportion of the pieces I have done. The new Unit 9 space will actually be a little smaller than the old one, and whereas we have been accustomed to hanging between a dozen and fifteen items in a show, in the new space I will aim to offer perhaps twice that number, really conveying a sense of my obsession with the subject. I’m really getting quite excited about it already.
I don’t think that I will go to the trouble of asking people who have purchased my Almscliff pictures to loan them back for the show. What I will have to do, however, is to make some improvements to several of the older pieces which I believe don’t come up to my current standards. There is one large piece, which is among the biggest I have done on the theme, that is also one of my earliest, and it might be fun to show this as an indication of the combination of naivety and megalomania which characterised my first efforts.