After a hiatus of 18 months, I am finally ready to start blogging again. I have been updating my website, using a new application and putting it onto a new server – and I thought long and hard about whether to get rid of the blog, start a new one or keep going with Moveable Type. It turns out that it is easier to just keep going with it.

Very quick update of the last year and a half;

I was on my way to my show in Chichester in December 2009 the last time I blogged. Well, that happened – looked good and then it was over. Not much else has changed since then, I continued to work at Edinburgh College of Art coordinating the Lifelong Learning courses and I continued to paint. For a while I had a studio with Catie at Coburg House Studios in Leith, but I actually did less work and of less quality than when I was working at home and on location. We moved into a new studio at Art’s Complex in Meadowbank recently, and I have since been making a lot more new work and on a more ambitious scale.

In May 2009, my father passed away, and this took some time for me to process and deal with. Since January 2010, images of my father have been appearing in my drawings and paintings. I used to draw my father both from life and memory when I was growing up, and I have this version of him in my head, visually ready to be explored. I am not quite sure why I am painting him, and particularly since I am painting him in my own current domestic setting, where he never visited. But this is what I clearly must do, as it is all I am willing to do at the present moment.

I expect I will put more work in progress up in due course…