London Baby Yeah

So as usual said lovely friend and I met up at Paddington Station for a day of following our noses and talking lots. She thinks I put real care and attention into making a day that suits her but it seems we fortunately enjoy the same things, I just drag her out of her comfort zone just enough. We went into a few intimate galleries in Camden and Fitzrovia, saw lots of works in ceramic. Slip molded tubes stuck to a canvas that as my non art gallery going friend noted, captured movement. We also saw canvases with sculptures attached boxed in as if one of Rene Magritte's Empty Mask paintings had taken three dimensional form. We saw a painting by a trained draughtsman of london and Thames in the snow, slightly sentimental depiction of the late 50's with some Lowri influences if you ask me, sells really well.

Then when I was thinking lets do no more galleries across the street I spotted in the corner of a window a small scale David Begbie piece, I was sure. I'd seen a show of his in Shad Thames about 15 years ago and had the catalogue for years. We crossed and entered and sure enough it was, we looked at the new work and the lady in the gallery said she preferred the early stuff. We agreed that his amazing accuracy in capturing the human form, muscles, flesh and so forth and them mixing genders in one form was so intriguing. I always found them compelling and here they were lit so well that you got the shadows to mirror the objects. In the basement gallery his newest reproduceable work in 2D cast the same shadows as the 3D, one of Amy Winehouse was part of a recent charity show. Impressive but not as compelling. We talked about all the work and she introduced herself as David Begbie's wife, this was so exciting, normally I'm not phased by the cult of the artist bull' but he'd become part of my mental landscape so ot was so nice to be connected, plus she kept asking me my opinion and shucks who doesn't like that?

David Begbie 2011

It's nearly Chinese New Year so we had lunch in Soho, the Royal Dragon, can not say how delicious it was, so fresh, its not the best looking place from the outside, but trust me, its good.

We walked lots and tubed little so by the time we reached festival hall I was grateful for a sit down and cake. Outsider Tart produced my second ever real life conversation with a New Yorker and a very chocaletely satisfyingly textured Hepburn, after visiting Tiffany's earlier all the possible get ready for NYC Art scene and holiday in May puns were complete.

Jen