I’m really chuffed to have some of my new vintage postcard paintings showing in this curated show in Fronteer gallery in Sheffield town centre. It’s my first show for a while but also one of many I’ve had at various venues in this awesome town. All invited to the Private View on 5th April - see info below. If you’d like to go at a quieter time, like me, please beware it’s not open on Fridays! :)
quacks.hurricane.swanky 2024 Posca pen on vintage postcard 9x14cm
Postcards to my Great Aunt
How did we get to the end of February so quickly? The days are getting longer and spring is thankfully in the air.
In a mass clearout, my mum deposited several boxes of my childhood into my flat. The mystery boxes have sat for too long next to my bed forming an anxiety-ridden mountain now known as Mount Koko. Over the past few months I finally took the plunge and found a lot of junk but also some gems. Most especially my old postcard collection collated into three scrapbooks when I was around my nine-year-old son’s age.
Most of the postcards had been given to me by family members and date from the 1960s through to 1990s. Many are from people who very much formed me but are sadly no longer around, like my dear Granny M. I have a lot of postcards to her older sister, my Great Aunt J, who was a prolific giver and receiver of correspondence. I don’t remember her, so I asked her nieces about her. She was a nurse and was awarded an OBE for setting up a women’s healthcare centre in Birmingham. My Great Aunt J was a seemingly charming and thoroughly modern woman.
Deciphering the handwriting on the postcards is often a challenge and the words hark back to a simpler era. They’re sometimes poetic and at times mundane, with the weather often a hot topic - some things never change!
The turns of phrase are often quaint and funny.
Dear Joyce, Florence is overwhelming! One recoils and suffers from culture shock. Visited the cathedral, Palace Vecchio, Michelangelo Place etc. Traffic hideous, non stop noise and fumes. Chris & Sofia (May 1975)
There is also one from my paternal grandparents to my maternal grandmother saying they were thinking of her during a visit to her old town. They invited her to stay. A slow form of the still succinct text message but you had to carry your address book and remember to buy stamps.
My son and I have been looking through the postcards together. There are lots of French alpine scenes and Welsh beaches. I decided to jazz-up these landscaped images from a bygone era, transporting the viewer into a Huxleyian-like world, and the Vintage Postcard painting series was born.
These mini paintings were produced in small pockets of time. I feel like I’ve travelled back in time whilst making them. I hope the viewer feels a bit of this time travel from looking at them!
A big thank you to those who sent me some Scuzzy Landscapes photos for potential painting subjects. You can still send me pictures if you want.
Different Shades of January Blues
The act of seeing is no small thing. To see something is to be possessed by it. Sometimes it carries off a part of you, sometimes it’s your whole soul.
Landscapes of the Heart, Motojiro Kajii
So January is dragging its heels, in the northern hemisphere anyway. It’s been so cold and wet and (seemingly eternally) so so grey. The dog still needs walking but the daylight is so squeezed that it’s a military mission to fit it all in. The mud fight is real!
sunset.placed.logs 2025 Canvas on Panel, 31x25cm
But once out, it's totally worth the effort and the walk I do regularly along a disused railway track feels a million miles away from the chaotic city I live in. I get most of my inspiration for my paintings when I'm out walking. Maybe it’s the slowness of the pace and its rhythm makes me notice the small details. I take 100s of pictures of random moments and eventually a few of them become paintings, like this rather Romantic skip in the sky, my first painting of 2025. These pictures are serendipitous moments of banality, three fridges dumped alongside a bin bag on a street corner for example. Somehow these subjects feel worthy of spending a few hours painting.
patrol.unless.slap 2024 Oil on Canvas Panel, 30x40
My new Scuzzy Landscape series has grown to over 30 paintings now. The paintings abstract three word names refer to their what3words location where the viewer is standing. Every three metre square of the entire planet (including the oceans) has been given its own unique three word combination. And this is where I’d love you to help….
CALL OUT FOR YOUR IMAGES
Can you name something beautiful or interesting you’ve seen lately?
I’d like to widen my search for images. So if you’d like to help contribute to my Scuzzy Landscape series, you can email me a picture or two, or as many as you like. The rules - there aren’t so many really - it should be a landscape in its widest definition where there’s some kind of man-made intervention in the natural landscape, or nature has infiltrated the urban or manmade in a surprising way. If possible, send me the exact what3words location where the photo is taken at the same time via their app. If this is not possible, send a location from your smartphone map. I can’t promise I’ll paint it (unless it’s a commission 😁) but if I do, you will get an source image credit when it’s exhibited.
If you’d like to see more Scuzzy Landscapes for inspiration go here.
kg
gardens inherit whiplash 2023 Oil on Canvas board 30x40cm
It's good to be back!
I’ve been busy at the easel creating some new paintings. I’m back painting after a hiatus - woo! Painting was probably my first love alongside chimpanzees and ice cream! There are so many reasons why I love painting - its meditative process, how mistakes can be epiphanies and the hypnotic qualities of colour and texture.
I have put my video practice on the backburner for now. One single image seems enough. Perhaps it’s in reaction to the deluge of moving imagery we see on a daily basis. Or a desire to slow down time. The year is almost over and exactly 12 months ago I started the Scuzzy Landscapes series with puppy Ripley at my side. She’s now been with us a year this week and is mellowing into the sweetest studio buddy. Here she is:
Ripley the Retriever
The Scuzzy Landscapes series name references our never really being in a totally natural landscape. They feature man-made remnants in their infinite forms, be it a demolished power station’s footprint on a beach, or candy-coloured plastic pipes snake-like in the grass. Each painting is named using the wonderfully abstract what3words app to locate exactly where the viewer is standing.
upper soup marine 2023 Oil on Canvas board, 30x40cm
I hope you enjoy the new direction my practice is taking. And if you’d like to enquire about any work or let me know what you think, please contact me here. My website is currently being updated, so the best place to keep up to date with me and my studio is to join my monthly newsletter here. kg
New Work Coming Soon
Due to various life barriers being chucked at me mostly outside of my control. But also in frustration and exhaustion, with an art world that expects artists and especially video artists to exhibit interesting relevant work with very little financial gain, I stepped back for a while. I took a full time job, got paid holidays, sick pay & a pension which I’ve never had before (which is boring but important to say). I didn’t make any work for a while but carried on taking photos as a form of instant sketching. But I’ve started making art again carving out time alongside the job and solo parenting duties and am making a totally new body of work in a new medium. I’m excited about this work and its potential. This picture is blurred on purpose ;) but watch this space. I’ll reveal it when I’m ready. And if you’re a gallerist or curator or just a make-happener :) and you’re interested in a chat please reach out. I miss you and it would be good to show together again soon. kg
Single Parent Project Zine
Really proud to have a beautiful etching of me and my son walking into the cloudscape with some copy I wrote featured in The Single Parents' Project first Zine put together by the wonderful and hardworking Rebecca Livesey-Wright chief mama and organiser of TSPP. Thank you Rebecca and you can find out about the project and can buy the zine here :)
First show of the year Jealous Gallery London
Back to School opens on 30th Jan at Jealous Gallery East and North, a show celebrating a decade of the excellent Jealous Print Prize awarded to MA art graduates. Each print is also in the V&A collection too. Lots of epicaly gorgeous prints available by recent/ish London art school graduates including my work Magic Spell made during my residency at their studio.
Still from Interregnum 2021 3D Animation by Katie Goodwin
The Waiting Place Virtual Exhibition Remains Open
You can visit this joyful and mind bending exhibition here. Best viewed on a laptop or desktop through the chrome browser. Click Join Room and choose your avatar and clic click on the small rectangles by doors to get in to each room. Follow directions to see what keys to use to move around. Arrow keys and Q & E to turn left and right are the basics. Enjoy! https://hubs.mozilla.com/rtjWZYE/twp-entrance
