2024 Round Up

I was a bit hopeless this year at sending regular newsletters so here is a quick end of year catch up on things I forgot to mention at the time.

I started the year working on a commissioned illustration of an eagle for Portuguese winery Quinta de la Rosa. This was a great challenge as I’ve been drawing purely architecture for the last decade!

The redesigned wine label has just launched this week so it’s been very satisfying to see the design come to life.

As a young kid interested in drawing and design it was a dream of mine to one day design a wine label. It’s nice to take a step back sometimes and appreciate the amazing opportunities that come my way as an artist.

Artist Residency in India

I spent the whole of February on an artist residency in India generously hosted by the Prakriti Foundation. But I’ll send a separate newsletter about it next month as I have many more drawings and photos to share from that amazing experience. In the meantime, above is a drawing of a detailed facade in Fatehpur Sikri near Agra. Excited to share more drawings inspired from this trip next year!

House Commissions

This year I have been working on a few different house commissions in both London and New York. I went to New York in July to deliver the artworks and explore the City. Tomorrow I will be returning to New York to spend my first Christmas there. Taking with me a commission of a house in Brooklyn I finished this week - just in the nick of time!

Abstract Artworks

I’ve balanced commission work with my own architectural drawing projects and also some more experimental abstract artworks.

First working on ‘Palimpsest’, where I took an old drawing and shaded in the whole thing to make a black triangle. Following after Rauschenberg, Malevich, and all those other artists who felt a desire to destroy their artworks.

I then created a life-size drawing of my pencil stub artwork ‘Practise’. Each pencil stub was drawn with the corresponding pencil shade (2B, HB, 8B etc). I love the contrast between the shades of pencils, the intrigue of the writing, and the continuation of the pencil stub story.

The piece is called ‘Shadow’. It’s about what is left behind by my last artwork.

Exhibitions

As you may already know my pencil stub artwork ‘Practise’ was exhibited in the RA Summer Exhibition this year which was a really special experience and a wonderful thing to be a part of.

Alongside that exhibition I have also exhibited in four other group shows in London. One on the iconic Portobello Road. One in collaboration with Create Streets. One in Islington which was the launch of a magazine I’m featured in. And one organised by the art consultants Artiq in the former vaults of the National Gallery.

House Renovation

Alongside this variety of work projects I have also done a full renovation of a flat in north London. Gutted the whole flat back to the bones, scaffolded, reroofed, rewired, replumbed….the full works basically. That has been a huge side project going on in the background. Amazingly I managed to work from home with the builders and still create my very clean drawings - that feels like the biggest achievement in many ways!