Preparing for a One Man Show
Trajectories into an Exhibition 1. Assembling the Past
With just over a month before the opening of my new One Man Show, I have been hard at it arranging for posters to be printed, invitations to be prepared and delivering work to the framers, while in regular discussions with the gallery.
Recently, someone asked me: how do you select work for an exhibition? It is such a good question, and a difficult one to answer. And over the next couple of posts, I will try to give some idea of how this evolves.
Arrangements for my show at the Highgate Gallery go back three years. During this time, a lot has been going on in my life, and I’d like to share some of the backstory to throw a helpful light on the genesis of the exhibition, and the themes developing from it.
TEN, 2024, MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER, 120 CM x 105 CM
I was looking to have One Man Show in London on my return from lockdown from South Africa in 2021 with a good body of work to exhibit. I had discussed it with a commercial gallery in London and it seemed set. But a hitch appeared after nearly a year of discussions. The reason given was that because I was neither black nor a woman, they couldn’t show my work! Commercial galleries soon after COVID were beset with massive pressure to show work by artists who had struggled to show during the epidemic.
I decided to go another route: hire a gallery space. Someone recommended the space in Highgate at the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institute. I applied and was accepted. Even here there was a waiting list for a couple of years. We decided on a date and I selected some paintings emblematic of what I was painting by this time, and the show was going to be called “The Blue Chair and Places in Between”.
2023 was an extremely productive year for my painting. In South Africa, I had developed a series of mixed media work in landscape, still life and with figures. I was constrained by size, and returning to the UK, I fulfilled the ambition of working on a larger scale with this medium. Even now, when I look back at the amount of work I was doing at the time, I am astonished. Because they were not quick paintings to do. Landscapes was done over whole seasons. Some figure paintings took six months to resolve.
In truth, I was partly losing myself in my work to attempt to shield myself from the impending loss of the three major maternal figures in my life who were to reach the end of their time within months of one another. My birth mother in Australia, my step mother here in England and my Aunt in South Africa who had presided over all of my adult life and before, since losing my adoptive parents at a young age. We all have to go through this, but this was quite a line up!
It was a numbing sensation to think that I had sat at these maternal figures’ tables, and soon their chairs would be empty. All of them had encouraged my painting in different ways. And we were curious to think of where it had sprung from. My uncle was particularly amused by it, less so when I had brought oil paint in from the studio over an unblemished white carpet, and earned the title of “his wife’s nephew”. My step mother, the gentlest of souls, who was an art teacher in her own right,was never failing to encourage. And with my birth mother, who was the most incredulous of all at my profession-it was easier to point to my brother who we proudly told our friends is a screen writer in Hollywood.
In the course of looking for and finding my birth family, I had been indulged with a plenitude of maternal figures, spoiled even with five half sisters. This was juxtaposed to the inability to calibrate a sustained relationship with very patient girlfriends over the years. Imagining that my career would be an unattractive proposition for them, I most probably leant instead into the sense of the feminine from family to sustain that role when I wasn’t driving girlfriends boss eyed with incredulity at my inability to manage the practical basics of life.
I was fortunate to have a wonderful model who exemplified the feminine I was looking for in painting. Seeing this extraordinary blue chair in a shop called Artique where I have bought many props for the studio, I used it as a symbol not only to imagine these role models in my life, but also to use it in conjunction with the model to express something which I would struggle to put into words.
MODEL SEATED WITH SHONA SCULPTURE, 2023, MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER,120 CM X 100 CM
Painting is exactly that. It has the ability to articulate emotions, thoughts, and notions of places, people and objects that serve as a touchstone to express the inexpressible through paint. I had no way of preparing myself for what was to come, and the logical thing was to throw myself more completely into my work. At times, there will have been aspects in a painting that will have set off thoughts and memories about these three people. The blue chair itself, I did buy as a way of thinking about the impact of these peoples lives, but my thoughts were relatively inchoate, and muddled, and disheveled by grief, or anticipating its effect on me.
At the same time, I was enjoying the supreme exhileration of working on a much larger scale and allowing the paintings to bloom into a bigger space. The model, with an elegant and full femine energy and rhythm to her figure was exquisite to paint and to be able to position her in large works and explore the combination of studio interior, flowers and landscape was the opportunity I had long been waiting for. The nervous energy fuelled itself from these larger compositions exploring a combination of themes, to taking long panoramic boards into the landscape around Caudle Green gave me a ballast against what I anticipated negotiating with grief.
AUTUMN IN CAUDLE GREEN , 2023, MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER, 154 CM X 75 CM
As these vital maternal figures so central to my life disappeared from view, I found myself caught in a web of deep feeling followed by an inability to feel anything, then taken over by an increasing feeling of exhaustion and hoping that the structure of various exhibitions would prop me up while working frenetically towards them. Whether this was practical, noble or foolhardy, I couldn’t tell. I relinquished myself to the forward momentum of where I hoped this was going. Strongly aware that this was my reason, I knew that the need to show work to advantage would offer me the cues to the next steps, whatever they were.
In part, the intensive work load together with the consecutive losses of people so close to me took its toll. A year later, exhausted, pressured and trying to live up to a timetable that was beyond me, I succumbed to a major heart attack at the end of 2024.
The exhibition was scheduled for April 2025. The committee who ran the gallery showed extraordinary generosity and understanding and allowed me to secure the dates of the 12th to the 25th of June in 2026.
This has allowed me time to recover strength and to start work again. By now I have a number of series of paintings to choose from. It’s only with hindsight that one can begin to see the implications of what the past brings to the present,and might anticipate in the future.
Some of you may have followed the development of a series of Lane landscapes which I have been doing in the past year. I’m planning to include a small group of these. Most noticeably, I have sensed a shift in palette. Much of my concentration has been on flower paintings and the landscape,and I will continue with those, but I am much looking forward too to returning to painting the figure.
And there are also the very difficult decisions involved of leaving paintings out which I would most like to include. This I can tackle in the next newsletter. But I will leave you with some images of paintings from this time. And I hope they may bring you to the exhibition, and or to the studio if they are not exhibited. All the work is for sale. Please do enquire here or email me on christopher.johnson215@gmail.com
CORONATION, 2023, MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER, 150 CM X120 CM
I probably havent even begun to answer the question which motivated this post.but the the complex backstory going back some years might offer some explanation for delays and dimensions which may relate to the show. I hope you will forgive me! I will write more specifically about the actual process of selection in a pre exhibition post.
THE LANE, JANUARY, 2026, ACRYLIC TEMPERA ON CANVAS, 60 CM X 50 CM.
Again, my sincere and grateful thanks to those of you who recently became paying subscribers. I am still in that place where I feel faintly uncomfortable pickpocketing people’s wallets for this. But the encouragement as well as the financial boost is immense, and helps to fill the spaces uncovered by not being able to exhibit for nearly two years. A huge and welcome thanks to you. Please feel comfortable to comment if you feel moved to. Invitations for the show will be going out imminently. If you have any queries, don’t hesitate to ask. I hope this finds you well.
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I am so glad to see you writing on Substack, Chris! Exciting that your new London exhibition is imminent. Thank you for sharing experiences from your own life in explaining how you come to paint what you do. Looking forward to hearing more!
Hello, Christopher! It’s a joy to be introduced to your beautiful painting and read about your experiences. Looking forward to more!
Congratulations on your upcoming exhibition!