2012 was a big year for London. Hackney, a part of London I am very familiar with was transformed into a shiny place for a few weeks and this multi cultural neighbourhood became a global village. No sooner had it begun than it was over. The streets were empty again and the shiny place was silent.
Tag: Painting
TriBeCa
I first went to NYC in 1984 on a four day art residency. At the time I was living in a small hamlet of about 20 estate cottages. My neighbours were sheep. It was a pastoral dream. Going from this environment into Manhattan was a culture shock to say the least. I was born in London and have visited many other big cities and so this big city was no new thing but the Big Apple was something else. The energy was electric, the people eclectic and in the city that never sleeps I felt energised and alive. I have loved the city ever since and find it endlessly inspiring.
TriBeCa no. 3
American Visions
In 2010 I was fortunate to spend three months in Florida. Fortunate in many ways, fortunate to meet my future wife, fortunate to experience the U.S. again and see how American culture had changed since I lived stateside in 1976 and fortunate to have time to paint. I have always loved to look at paintings and my career was in art but I never painted in the purist sense of the word. I probably never would have but for my future wife.
We were talking about art and I was waxing lyrical about the painters I liked and she said why don’t you paint? It was as if I had just heard a funeral bell toll, a silent tumbleweed moment. I came up with a myriad of excuses but I suppose I felt daunted by the prospect. Intimidated even. Ce who was herself an artist was having none of it and so we got some canvasses, acrylic paints an easel and brushes. My first strokes were hesitant, un sure and that was strange to me because in my day job my art was completely confident and assured.
I have always liked American culture and the what is now almost clichéd iconography. The diners, blues and country music, old pickup trucks. These paintings were a fusion of emotional reactions to my surroundings, meeting and falling in love with my wife and memories of my previous times as a teenager in Memphis.
The experiment, for that is what it was, worked. When I returned to England I had the strongest desire to paint and so a journey began which has proved an interesting and challenging one and so it continues but it really started with American Visions.
ASJ
American Vision 2
American Vision 3
American Vision 4
American vision5
The Pink Door
American Vision1
NY
andy jamieson 