Visit my gallery
Thank you to everyone who came to my exhibition My 20:20 vision last month at St Andrews Arts Centre in Gravesend. It was really well attended, despite the short notice. It was lovely to see everybody and I sold a bit, which is always nice.
Thanks also to the Iron Pier Brewery https://www.ironpier.beer/ who provided the beer. The Perry Street Pale went down really well.
The exhibition featured quite a bit of new artwork – I’ve started painting again – a lot of it inspired by my experiences growing up in Gravesend. You can see this new artwork, all in one place at the moment, on my website https://duncangrantartist.com/product-category/new-artwork/
Among the pieces, there’s one of Rochester Road where I grew up and where my mum still lives. There are the bonfires that used to be built on the communal ground up at Barr Road in the run up to November 5th. And there are a few different treatments of the strange line poplars that I used to walk and cycle past and that still act as wind breaks in the fields between Higham and Cliffe, .
But the biggest influence on my art has always been the Thames. If you live in Gravesend you can’t avoid it: the river is just part of your life. Its cranes and chimneys, and now the wind turbines at Tilbury, are visible from the town centre and from loads of other vantage points. As I was growing up, I could see a ‘slice’ of river between the houses over the road, from our front bedroom.
As a kid I used to go walking on the marshes with my dad and sometimes we went over to Tilbury on the ferry to visit relatives.
Later, as a teenager, I spent loads of time down on the Thames foreshore and in the backwaters, out on my bike, with my mates, fishing and just generally messing about.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that if you’re from Gravesend, you’ll have your own perceptions and memories of the river. After all, it is the reason the town is here and it was once a major source of employment for Gravesend folk. It really is an ever present figure, flowing through our lives and shaping the history and geography of the place.
I wrote a blog about the Thames in March last year. If you missed it, here is a link which includes some of my older pieces inspired by the river, as part of a soundscape https://www.duncangrantartist.com/2019/03/20/drawing-inspiration-from-the-thames/
Fluid Landscapes
Gravesham Arts’ Fluid Landscapes: Responses inspired by the river at Gravesend and the nearby marshes project is now extending an invitation to local creatives to express their particular relationship with the Thames through their art, writing and poetry.
This project is being led by Heather Haythornthwaite, who was one of the artists selected for the Gravesham Arts Sponsored Artist Programme for 2019-2020. Heather runs the The Hazelnut Press, a fine art printmaking studio in Rochester, Kent, and her own artwork often explores the histories embodied in the local landscape and people’s personal experience of them. She is particularly interested in depicting familiar and overlooked places.
Fluid Landscapes works like this. A series of concertina ‘sketchbooks’ are shared and circulated between participating artists. Each artist adds an original hand drawn picture, painting or collage, inspired by the Thames at Gravesend, to one of the pages in the sketchbook. Then, within 48 hours, the sketchbook is passed on to the next artist. That artist adds their contribution, and so the process continues until the sketchbook is full.
Although a wide range of different artistic contributions are welcome, there are some restrictions. Artists are asked not to use anything too fragile or thick, and the work must be completely dry before the sketchbook is passed on! There is more information, some guidance notes and some quotes and video to help inspire you, on Heather’s website https://www.hazelnut-press.com/fluid-landscapes
The Fluid Landscapes project will culminate in an exhibition at the St Andrew’s Art Centre in Gravesend – the place where I had my recent exhibition – at the end of May 2020. At the heart of the show will be the communally produced concertina ‘sketchbooks’, accompanied if there is room, by other freestanding art pieces, writing and poetry, all focused on and inspired by the theme of the Thames at Gravesend and its marshes. Heather hopes that the sketchbooks will find a more permanent home somewhere in Gravesend, after the exhibition is finished.
Heather is already working with the Gravesend Art Group http://www.gravesendartgroup.co.uk/on this project but if you would like to get involved and produce a piece of art that expressses your own particular relationship with the Thames, there is still time.
Fluid Landscapes is not an open access project, you have to have your ‘application’ accepted if you are to take part. So, if you are interested in taking part, please contact Heather at info@hazelnutpress.com
And if you would like to find out more about The Hazelnut Press and its print-making courses, follow this link https://www.hazelnut-press.com/