‘My Dark Companion #2’. I painted this in 2013 on a Sunday afternoon in my studio space at UEL. Continuing a goth theme with crows at gravestones I’d sporadically pursued in 2012/13. I recall this being the only one in colour.
September 2024
24th September 2024
One of my favourite works from and exhibition called ‘Painter’s Paintings’ at The National Gallery in 2016. This small drawing by Frank Auerbach was a birthday card from Auerbach to Lucian Freud from a photograph of them together at the Cock Tavern. Sometimes a small, unassuming piece of art draws you in and actually becomes your favourite work amongst much larger, fully realised paintings. That’s what happened to me when I saw this drawing. A small, intimate moment that says so much.
23rd September 2024
Another of my favourite exhibitions from a few years ago. 2018. An exhibition of Degas drawings shown at the National Gallery in London. It was the perfect Sunday afternoon in London to see this small but exquisite exhibition.
22nd September 2024
Apologies for the poor photography. I remember this painting from one of my favourite artists, Edvard Munch, hanging in a show at The British Museum in 2019. The exhibition was called ‘Edvard Munch: Love and Angst’ and the painting ‘The Sick Child’ (1907). It was dark and unsettling, yet beautiful and inspiring at the same time. An experience I’ve never forgot.
21st September 2024
Another sketch from my dancer period. I loved this image and eventually made a large scale oil painting from it.
20th September 2024
I think this came from 2009 when I had a period of Dance paintings. I particularly enjoyed painting/sketching tango dancers and the Lindy Hop. Personally I can’t dance to save my life. I drifted away from these after a short while but I remember enjoying them. In fact one of my first sales came from this period.
19th September 2024
Photographing work from my ‘Secret Souls’ series. 2015.
18th September 2024
Me in my other job as the Rosetta Arts technician from way back around 2015, about to start drilling holes for the cover I made to block the light spilling into the photography darkroom by the air vent somebody saw fit to install. A friend and colleague called Hassan took the black and white photo with an old camera he was into at the time.
16th September 2024
One of my more expressive paintings from 2007.
15th September 2024
‘Mute’ An oil painting from 2013.
14th September 2024
A gothic drawing in charcoal and chalk for a possible commission that didn’t happen.
13th September 2024
A brief experiment in collage from 2014. Wish I’d have kept it going. I liked the humour that was emerging from them.
12th September 2024
The last days of the Window Gallery and with it my residency there with Rosetta Art Centre. 2012. Just in time too because that’s when we got hit with plumbing issues from the toilets next door flooding mine and the studio next to mine. Also the very last day after the closing show stinking of both vomit and a heavy dumping session in the toilet that gave up the ghost and stopped flushing altogether. The glamour of the artistic life.
10th September 2024
Another nude study in watercolour dating from about 2009.
9th September 2024
A sketch from my second residency in 2013 with the Theatre Royal Straford East, this time recording rehearsals for ‘their pantomime, ‘Dick Whittington’. This was a quick drawing in pen and ink of one of the actors reading through pages of the script.
5th September 2024
Fantastic evening at the Tower Gallery tonight with a group show called ‘Autumn’. I was lucky to have two paintings on show. It was a great night and a really well put together exhibition. A good night for meeting new people and catching up with friends also showing in the exhibition. The show continues every weekend up until the 29th September. I’m not the greatest at getting good photos of these events but here’s what I managed on the night, balancing my phone and my wine glass at the same time.
4th September 2024
This was a mixed media work I made around 2009/10 for an exhibition exploring the theme of celebrity culture, depicted here as a kind of nightmarish Frankenstein’s monster, with camera lenses where the eyes should be and hair made up torn and ripped pages from celebrity magazines. Even now I feel that exposing myself to the content of those magazines showed an extraordinary dedication to my art practice and the exhibition itself.
3rd September 2024
An early mixed media piece including quotes from a Tom Waits song. The light in the eye actually worked. I can remember exhibiting this in the Barbican Library in a group show with some other mixed media works of mine and getting some of the worst feedback in the comments book I’ve ever had! I wish I still had them to hand but they were along the lines of “Steve Marriott’s work looks like it came from a rubbish bin and that’s where it should have stayed!” People got quite angry about it. None of which made me stop making more.
2nd September 2024
I did these charcoals around 2010 after a trip to the British Museum. I remember really enjoying them at the time and still like to look at them now,
1st September 2024
An old studio space. I pinned up a nice big sheet of paper and made this drawing of my space looking inside and out into another part of the studio where other artists worked. This was something I really enjoyed doing between projects.
