The really random newsletter all about my art

www.tonynerobrushworks.com April 2014 issue 11

l Block Collective to Jazz up underpass

lSouth Holland Open Arts

lNew York raffle winner

lGetting abstract with Oundle art group

Tony Nero’s Art NEWS

As artists we aspire to do great things!

WelcomeWelcome to issue 11 of my news-letter. When I started the first one I had no idea it would grow like this and recently a friend refered to it as a magazine. Nice words are always encouraging.

Time is moving so fast that I can’t believe i’m now working on issue 11 of this newsletter. Speaking of time, well changing times at the monent for me. I’ve opted out of doing Open Studios this year but busy in the background helping out with arrangemants and planning. I didn’t realise what i were letting myself in for when I joined the committee. Also busy producing lots of new work.

This issue’s front cover features my painting of Jonathan Clynch ‘The Wood Carver’. This painting was entered into the Mall gallery’s portrait competition but sadly didn’t make it on the walls. I just know that one day they will give in and let me hang one up.

Block Collective set to jazz up city underpassFor some time now local artists have been fighting the negativity that there’s no art scene in the city. So it’s joyful to see that Blok Collective have been given the go ahead to jazz up the city’s central underpass at Cowgate. After beating national competition with their bid, the local art collective have been busy draft-ing ideas to transform the underpass with a burst of creative energy.

The final pieces of works which are expeted to be completed in May, will feature a collarge of creative concepts and ideas from stories of the local area.

Project Leader, Stuart Payn said “The Peterborough art scene is thriv-ing with energy and passion; this is a chance to share this passion with a fresh & bold creative legacy for both locals and visitors to our city.”

Jason Duckmanton, Luke Payn, Amanda Rigby, Stuart Payn, Keely Mills, Jay Gearing, Lee Mason (not pictured). Photo Credit: Simon Belham

South Holland Open Arts exhibition

Ever since my first showing at the South Holland Arts Centre in 2006, I always enjoy revisiting this beauti-ful space each year for their annual open studio art exhibitions. This year it was great to have my pastel draw-ing ‘Winter over the Fens’ accepted for display. I actually thought that the other painting which I had submitted would have been the one chosen. It just shows how unpridictable art can really be... you just never know.

Fellow artist Mary Kemp had two of her new pieces accepted. Both

pieces depticting her lovely garden. We went to the exhibition together and had a super evening prevewing all the other beautiful pieces of art.

The first picture below shows a fly made up enterly of silver spoons and the other shows the galaxy made from solid steel. Nicola Smith sent me the above picture of herself standing by my drawing, taken on her visit to the exhibition. Such a lovely surprise. It’s always great get-ting that kind of support from friends and fans alike.

Raffle winner in New York scoops a Tony Nero originalHeart felt congratulations to Raffle winner Rev. Dr. Glyger Beach, who was over the moon with his prize.

My pastel drawing of the flour mill in St Vincent was won by Rev. Beach, but not before having quite an adventure getting to New York. For various reasons, missing two raffles and surviving near damage. The drawing was donated to New York charity ‘Vincy Cares’ to help raise funds at their annual charity ball for the people of St Vincent & the Grenadines.

Honored by Albany, NY’s Senator Parker to the 2011 Veteran’s Hall of Fame, Rev. Beach was very happy to have won the drawing. It’s always nice as an artist to know that your work is going to a good home.

Thanks to Marcia Kirton-Ceaser for the super cool pic.

My most recent painting, of which I don’t even have a title for as yet. Done in the same style as Emma’s Kiss, mixing a bit of abstract with a bit of realism and just only using a basic three colours to create this dynamic effect. White, Umber and silver, well, and a crazy hand to produce this piece of work.

I love working like this, as you can really let yourself go and work quite freely. The picture also has two lives, it looks different in the night as the silver punches out.

Photographer Melanie Evans said ‘Bloody wow, I love it’, and Yve Scott said ‘That’s right out there Tony, I love it’. Some super cool comments, always encouraging.

Most recent painting

Happy ending at Charity Ball

Tony’s Shout Out!

My shout out in this issue goes out to Shaky Art, a guy who at a point in his life had a most terrible accident. The accident damaged his brain and has left him shaking constantly. This makes it difficult for him to do ordinary things that most of us in general find easy and take for granted.

With his love for art, he found a way of holding a paint brush in his mouth which enables him to paint and create works of art. Listening to him one day as we spoke at one of my exhibitions, I can only admire anyone who tries so hard regardless of their daily difficulties.

Keep doing what you’re doing Shaky, with passion and determination comes improve-ment and fullment.

As I’ve said before, it’s always great to know that your work is going to a good home. This paint-ing I did recently, entitled ‘Hang on dude, i’ve got your back’, surly went to a happy home.

The painting was donated to be auctioned at Harley’s Charity Ball and was won by Cllr Darren Fower, who won the bid against Dave Heyhoe. When Cllr Fower found out Dave had personal reasons for wanting the painting, he handed it to an estatic Dave who was over-joyed for such a generous gift. The painting depicted a soilder and his dog, Liam and theo, friends of Dave’s who died just hours apart. I caught up with Cllr Fower later on, who said ‘There was was a true hero in the room, so I had to do it’.

Cllr Fower posing with one of my other paintings

Getting abstract with the Oundle art group

In March I was invited by artist and jeweller Jane Sanders to run a work-shop with the Oundle Art Group and what an eventful day it was.

With no current transportation of my own I decided to head out to the little

village of Tansor, which is just out-side of Oundle, by bus. I didn’t know where I were going so I did the best thing and asked the driver to give me a shout when we got there. After about half an hour the bus driver shouted ‘this is your stop’. Yeah

right! To my surprise he dropped me off at the wrong stop, so I ended up walking about 3 miles to get to Tansor Village Hall, where the art group usually have their weekly meet up.

After a welcomed cuppa and meet-ing the lovely group we got started on painting an abstract rose. I was chuffed to see that quite a number of the group had looked on my website to see what I were going to give them to do. We started by laying a textured background using acrylic pain.There were a roar of laughter as I squeezed out the paint from the tube directly on to the canvas,

instead of using a brush. The idea was to have a bit of fun with the me-terials so that the work can be free and loose.

Painting was almost a disaster, as I had asked the group to use way too much paint on the initial background, so the paint was taking too long to dry. With such a lovely bunch of people who were throughly enjoying the session, and the idea of working in a different way, they just carried on being creative. The end result I believe, was that everyone enjoyed themselves, learnt something and created a piece of work at the end of the session.

In the picture!

If you’re ever in Peterborough City, wether just chilling out or visiting from out of town, here’s a nice little arty treat. Most Saturdays you can find an artist doing some form of live art at Art in the Heart, our local gallery and art shop. So refreshing to see artists working and sharing their ideas and practice with the public. I recently dropped in on Stacey-Ann Cole’s session and made some trouble as usual. She tried her hardest to explain her watercolour techniques but i was trying to nick her custard creams.

In October BBC Radio Cambs invited me on air to do a chit chat on the Celebrating Diversity event we were putting on. I managed to get the great Don Sanders out of his bed early to come down to the Square and do a live piece for the radio. It was surly a good way to start the day and nice when Kate came up and said, ‘Oh, I just heard you on the radio and there you are’. But the best one was David Smith coming to speak to me in the middle of my interview and saying to Johnny Dee, ‘excuse us for a minute’, aww, I guess you can’t beat live.

Saturdays it’s live at Art in the Heart

A different artist most Saturdays producing live art

Hanging with Don Saunders & DJ Johnny Dee

Street artist Alan with his super cool sand sculpture. He scrapes all the sand up at the end of the day!

Some really new stuff for 2014

I’m currently on a mission to produce a batch of new works this year and here are six of my latest pieces. These are a few of my contempoary urban style pieces, which are heading to ‘Art in the Heart’ gallery, and a couple of cool teddybears chucked in which will be heading to ‘Bear With Me’, teddybear shop.

One thing for sure, the new pieces will be as diverse as as ever, with more added to the urban collection, a watercolour collec-tion and a body of work for a ‘Darker than Blue’ exhibition, as well as some new pieces for an exhibition at North St Bar.

Living Data in city Time for some cover art

It was really nice to catch the ‘Living Data’ exhibition, by artist Michael Takeo Magruder at the Museum. But even more pleasing, was to be able to go along to the artist talk and hearing about the concepts and ideas behind the pieces of work.

To sum it all up, Michael and his team of experts builds their own computers to capture data. That data is then transformed into live art, so as the data changes, so does the work. For example there’s a piece of work which was created from data captured from the Dow Jones and another from data captured from images of flow-ers on the internet. So in essence, with my daily Twitter tweets I have helped to create the piece made from data captured from Twitter. How cool is that!

When Toyin Adekale shouted me from across the water, over there in Seattle and asked me to work on the cover for her new track, I said #let’sdoit.

Toyin had a vision of what she wanted the cover to look like and she liked the style of some of my recent work to use as a format to compliment the final artwork. I was even sent a copy of the track to listen to to get some inspiration. I have to say it’s a cool and mellow track that grew on me more and more each day I worked on it. It took some doing to get the image right. First I wasn’t sure about it, then I had done too much on the smaller face, but finally by taking out some of the details it was just right.

I’m pleased to say that Toyin liked the final artwork and the single is now available on iTunes.

The Storm is Over

Sunshine’s Here

Toyin Adekale

www.paos.org.uk

28 & 29 June 5 & 6 July 12 & 13 JulyInspirational art in homes and studios throughout the city of Peterboroughand surrounding villages

PETERBOROUGH

ARTISTS’OPENSTUDIOS 2014

Art ExhibitionPart of Peterborough Artists Open Studios

Visit PAOS website for more information and other artists: www.paos.org.uk

Embe Restaurant2 Burghley Road, Peterborough PE1 2 QB

Opening times: All 3 weekends 12 - 5 pm

Including live art

Photo of the day What’s onThis issue’s picture of the day is taken from the Black History Month event entitled ‘Celebrating Diversity in Peterborough’, which was held in October last year.

Yours truly mixing it up with honored guests, the Mayor Cllr June Stokes and the delightful, Cllr Julia David-son. It’s always a pleasure to be in your company Cllr Davidson and thank you for all your support.

This picture was taken at the town hall recption which was followed by a series of exciting performances in Cathedral Square. I’m pleased to say that Saturday 4th October 2014 have already been set as the date for this year’s event, again at the town hall and in the square.

Photo by Shaun Pitchers courtesy of Pitchers Photography

l Live art Saturday: Art in the Heart 47 Bridge Street, Peterborough, PE1 1HA. A different artist each Saturday www.artintheheart.co.uk

l London Overspill - James Smith. City Gallery, Peterborough Museum, PE1 1LF. 3rd May-6th July

l River Lane - a play about Peterborough, performed by the people of Peterborough. 8-18th May 2014 at Unit 23, Lower Floor Rotunda, Serpentine Green Shopping Centre. www.easternangles.co.uk

l Summer Exhibition - Part of Peterborough Artists Open Studio (PAOS) 28 & 29 June 5 & 6, 12 & 13 July. All 3 weekends at Embe, 2 Burghley Rd, PE1 2QB.Featured artists: Stacey-Ann Cole, Mahemuda Arsalani & Josephine Kelly-Gobuiwang

l Peterborough Artists Open Studio (PAOS) 28 & 29 June. 5 & 6, 12 & 13 July 2014. For more information visit: www.paos.org.uk

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