Bernard & Neil had talked for a couple of years about Neil coming to paint in Bernard’s space, and when it finally came to fruition, we were asked to video-document the work as he painted.
It was an incredible honour & experience to watch Neil at work. Bernard’s bottle of wine obviously helped the creative juices to flow, but the creative sparks would have been there anyway.
This was a brave thing that Neil did, to step out of his comfort zone of recognisable painting style of fifty years, and try something completely new. The end goal was to have a show that coincided with his retrospective show in the Ulster Museum in December 05.
We met for 8 sessions, where Neil painted 2 or 3 paintings an evening, finally painting two 10 metre ‘freezes’ which were spectacular.
Once the first cut of the footage had been made [30 hours down to half an hour!], we were asked if we could handle the design of the book for the show. Our suggestion was to use high resolution photographs of the paintings interspersed with digital stills, sometimes with movement pixelation, to contrast between the digital & analogue artforms. Bernie J edited layout and text, shaped design concepts, hosted the show, and looked after us all.
What a pleasant year’s work.
You can find photos of some of the work at : www.naked-shawcross.com
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