My First Review

Hopefully, this may be a post I will look back at and laugh later.

Here is my first review in today's Chronicle (which featured my court sketch on it's cover again yesterday, this time as a mirror image.) :

Bon Amici [Coffee House]in Margaret Street is featuring the work of Des Howell in the exhibition Faces and Figures.

Enthusiasm seems to over-ride any firm selection criterion in this over-crowded and sometimes difficult to see show. [Next time, I show in a properly set up gallery!] The work ranges from competent [such fullsome praise!] stylized and detailed pencil studies to colourfully exotic female subjects, some [actually one] brandishing lilies, and others adopting sultry latin poses.

This is alongside other reviews, one of which contains lines like

This exhubriant exhibition of colourful abstract statements uses spatters of paint and fluid shapes, some reminescent of forms from nature, to express an internal journey through the corridors of an artist's poetic imagination.

I am still trying to figure out which of my paintings feature "sultry latin poses" and I put the lilies there because I thought poses of implicitly naked ladies putting an empty hand on their head look silly unless you emphasize the "Art Noveau" connection. Anyway, someone loves her. I have been told they are racking up a deposit to buy her.

Ah, it is all in the eye of the beholder!

As for my diversity, my "signature" is If people say you are always going off on a tangent, it probably means they are still going round in circles.

My experience of academia suggests to me that lecturers often impose narrowly defined assignments with a view of making them easy to rate later. Their students get into the habit of working within narrow themes to meet their memories of academic critics' expectations. I tend to agree with the artist who said that if they understand you, you might be doing something wrong.


Anyone like to comment on their own reviews?

Cheers

Des