Summer Exhibition at Kipper & Chalk
Each summer, Imogen Gilbert-Johnson invites an artist to hang some pictures at the HQ of her tailoring business Kipper & Chalk. I’m the lucky one this year.
I met Imogen because she saw my Sardinhas de Fato paintings hanging in a seafood restaurant in Porto and bought a print for her shop - kipper is an old term for a female tailor.
Below are some photos of my paintings hanging in Kipper & Chalk. If you’re in Pimlico this June, July, August, go and have a look. On June 3rd I’ll be there having a drink and chat with a few people - you’d be v welcome to join us.
A Very Long Beak - I wanted to paint a bird with shoes on and chose a guam kingfisher as my model. I haven’t made many spotty paintings like this. It’s not often I get to paint a picture for the fun of it, and I saw this exhibition as an opportunity to play around a bit.
Two paintings. The swimmer is a painting I made about seven years ago in Porto, around the time I made those Sardinhas de Fato ones. The bigger painting is the kind of painting I like best, when I create a character who has an imaginary personality and identity. This guy is a trumpeter who’s really keen on mathematics. You’ll see a few indicators of this around the painting. I painted his trumpet with gold paint, which i’ve not used much before.
In this busy corner you can see lots of things I’ve made.
The ship at the top was painted by my grandfather Bill and it hung on my bedroom wall when I was a boy. During my chemotherapy I was lost in a fog and painted the colourful version of it beneath, full of creatures.
The two skippers are the first of a series that I never completed, at a time when boxers jumping rope appealed to me for some reason.
Above that is the Teenage Icecream Vendor, my painting about those early jobs we have that can be odd and brilliant and fun and carefree. I enjoyed painting him or her eating the biggest icecream in the world. It’s supposed to be unclear whether it’s a young man or woman, but not for any particular reason. I just wanted them to be a spotty young person.
The Sardinhas de Fato print is the one Imogen first bought for her shop. And you can see a couple of sardinhas cushions there too.
Come to the exhibition and if you do, sign the visitor’s book.
David