Behind the Scenes: Preparing Paintings for an Exhibition in Newcastle

Exhibiting a painting is the final stage of a much longer journey.

Before a piece reaches a gallery wall, there have often been months of ideas, sketchbook studies, experiments and hours spent working in the studio. Then comes another part of an artist's life that isn't always seen: selecting, preparing, transporting and delivering the finished work for an exhibition.

On this occasion, I was in Newcastle delivering paintings to The Biscuit Room, part of The Biscuit Factory, for a group exhibition.

And, naturally, once the paintings had been safely dropped off, I couldn't resist having a look around.

Taking paintings out of the studio

There is always something slightly strange about removing paintings from my studio.

While I'm working on them, they become part of the space around me. I see them every day – sometimes for weeks or months – and continually assess them as they develop.

Eventually, though, they have to leave.

Seeing a painting in a completely different environment can transform the way I look at it. The light is different, the surrounding colours change and, most importantly, it begins to exist alongside the work of other artists.

Suddenly, something that has been a very private part of my studio practice becomes public.

The challenge of a large exhibition space

The Biscuit Room is an impressively large space.

Standing in an empty exhibition venue immediately makes you think about scale in a different way. Paintings that can feel substantial in a studio or home suddenly have to hold their own within a much larger architectural environment.

It's one of the reasons I find exhibiting so useful as an artist.

It allows me to see relationships between different pieces of my work that aren't necessarily obvious when they're scattered around the studio.

Do the colours communicate with one another? Is there a rhythm between the paintings? Does one work need space around it, while others benefit from being viewed together?

A collection of individual paintings gradually begins to become an exhibition.

Seeing original paintings in person

Gallery exhibitions also offer something that photographs and social media simply cannot replicate.

Painting is a physical object.

The scale, surface and texture of a canvas are all part of experiencing it. Layers that might appear flat in a photograph reveal themselves when you move closer. Colours behave differently according to the light, while subtle marks and traces of the painting process become visible.

This is particularly important with my own work.

My paintings often contain multiple layers, expressive marks, strong colour and geometric structures that may be revealed in some areas and almost completely hidden in others.

You need to move around them.

From a distance, you might initially encounter the landscape and overall composition. Closer inspection begins to reveal pattern, texture, fragments and the evidence of how the painting was made.

Bringing paintings together

Preparing work for an exhibition also gives me an opportunity to reflect on the connections running through different paintings.

Although individual works may have begun in different gardens or landscapes, recurring ideas gradually emerge: colour, nature, abstraction, pattern, geometry and our relationship with the environments around us.

Sometimes I don't fully recognise those connections until several paintings are hanging together.

That's one of the interesting things about developing a body of work. Individual paintings may begin independently, but over time they start to speak to one another.

An exhibition makes that conversation visible.

Part of being a professional artist

Painting in the studio is the part of an artist's life that people perhaps imagine most readily.

But there is a great deal that happens around it.

Paintings have to be finished, photographed, catalogued, wrapped, transported and installed. Exhibitions need to be organised and promoted. And eventually, hopefully, some of those paintings leave again to begin a new life with a collector.

I enjoy that variety.

There is something particularly satisfying about arriving at a gallery carrying paintings that began months earlier as an idea, a photograph or a quick sketch made somewhere in the landscape.

The journey from that first mark to an exhibition wall can be a long one.

But seeing the finished work out in the world makes it worthwhile.

You can watch the accompanying video for a brief behind-the-scenes glimpse of my visit to The Biscuit Factory and some of the paintings I was preparing to exhibit at The Biscuit Room.