October turned out to be a very busy month, including more trips to galleries – in particular to The Tate Britain to see the current Francis Bacon retrospective and also to London’s most worthy rival to The Tate(s), the enormous and newly refurbished Duke Of York’s old headquarters, which now houses the newly opened Saatchi gallery, to see the wonderful exhibition – The Revolution Continues, New Chinese Art.

First I will start with the Francis Bacon retrospective. There are some 60 or more paintings on view and the sheer power of his work is formidable to say the least. Violent and raw, yet glorious at the same time with their strange, misshapen but compelling figures, the sheer scale of the paintings is overwhelming in the flesh and I could get sufficiently close enough to them to see the paintwork, but not as close as I could to the work at The Saatchi Gallery………

Charles Saatchi is a godsend to the art establishment, and his new, 70,000 square ft voluminous gallery in Chelsea is truly fabulous. This stunning art space is so light and airy, but thinking back I don’t remember seeing too many windows, and it is divided up into several gallery areas over various floors. Incredibly there were no barriers between the viewer and the art, meaning that it was possible to get very close to the work indeed and refreshingly the taking of photographs was permitted. Whilst I know nothing of Chinese art, apart from what I saw at this exhibition, I understand that some of the works on display were quite valuable, which makes this all the more remarkable. It may have been something to do with the fact that I was at a preview, having been invited the day before the official opening of the gallery to the general public as I have a listing on Saatchi Online, but I suspect and hope that this may be a general gallery policy.

The art itself varied from the sculpture of a giant female nude, and various other works of sculpture throughout the building – including, and from, naked body parts suspended on the roof to a man lying down with his arms outstretched and his tongue stuck to the floor. All of which interspersed the colourful and thought provoking canvasses. I must say, I had to get pretty close to the guy on the floor before I realised that it wasn’t a real man. Very spooky. The whole exhibition is stunningly finished off with the delightful geriatrics in wheelchairs circling each other like fairground dodgem cars down in the basement. The Revolution Continues is a must see, and to top it all entry to the exhibition is free.

I shall be back to London in January to see Rothko at The Tate Modern and I shall definitely be back for another visit to The Saatchi Gallery as well.

MEANWHILE BACK IN THE STUDIO……….

I am delighted that a few more of my paintings have sold this month, including one to the talented artist and children’s illustrator Jacqueline East. Also some new works have been listed on my gallery pages recently, including Waha and Metaphysical Diary (ii), the second work in my ongoing series. I am busily working away on some new paintings in my studio, amongst which are Gyllyngvase (iv) and (v). These are in a similar style to the first three, which have now recently sold, and images will be uploaded to the gallery in the near future.