WELCOME TO THE GRAND TOUR
This project began with a found photo album from 1933. My gallerist friend Bruce Hoffman had found this in 1982 in an open air market in Rome, and he thought I might be inspired by it, as I frequently use historical references in my paintings.
This album was a remarkable artifact, just to begin with. It had tooled leather, and pristine dark pages with beautiful handwritten captions, all in Italian, written in white ink. The photos show the story of a woman traveling from Genoa, through Egypt and and Israel, staying at iconic hotels and exploring the most remarkable sites throughout the Nile Delta. The photos appear to be from a professional photographer traveling with her. Just for historical reference, this was less than ten years after Howard Carter's discovery of Tut's Tomb, during the wave of Tutmania.
It's also the year that Agatha Christie stayed at the Old Cataract Hotel while writing her novel, Death on the Nile. Our mystery woman also stayed at this hotel, did they cross paths? what might that have been like?
This for me, became a research project - I found the itinerary, the names of all the hotels she stayed in, the sights she visited the names of the two steamships she travelled on, as well as the one on which she cruised down the Nile. I learned quite a bit about the trip, the steamship companies, the hotels, and some of the historical context of the time and place. However, I never learned her name.
This project for me began in 2018, and ended with the gallery show at Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia. However, she stayed with me. I've found myself thinking about what life she led, does she have any antecedents, and if so, what would they think of the fact that someone across the Atlantic was inspired to research and create paintings about her, 85 years later?
So this is the story that I'm set to explore in a documentary project. This is just in the nascent stage, but I'm gifted with an amazing gathering of creative collaborators to develop this project.
WATCH THIS SPACE!
BAVARD BAR AND CATALYST CLUB
This past Autumn, I gave a talk about the story of the Grand Tour - first at a very fun monthly event here in Saint Leonards called the Bavard Bar, at the Kino Theatre.
This event is described as 'Part TED Talk, part comedy, and part Radio Four. Sort of.' It was great fun doing a presentation about this story that I love so much, and it began getting some traction - I then did the talk in Eastbourne at another Bavard Bar, then in Brighton at a similar event called the Catalyst Club (Seriously, these are such fun, take a look at the links below), and now it looks like I'll be doing two more locations.
This video here is from the Eastbourne Bavard Bar, on November 13, 2024. Enjoy!
PROCESS PICS
Here's a slideshow of images throughout the process - research, translation notes, studio pics in process, and the gallery show at Gravers Lane Gallery in October of 2018.
The paintings are created with beeswax, resin and oil on wood panel. You can see here that the wax is melted and color mixed on a hot palette and there's also pot of molten clear wax medium. Just FYI.
