Marilyn Bailey

Having a career that spans quite a length of time makes it difficult to pick out particular highlights. I left St Martins in the 70’s as a Filmmaker and Performance Artist but also with my first solo exhibition of collage/drawings at the National Theatre. I travelled showing my film work as one of the Arts Council Filmmakers on Tour and, with fellow filmmaker William Raban, we were awarded a British Council grant to make an extensive tour of the USA. We also gained a British Film Institute grant to make an complex and poetic film based on Oscar Wilde’s story ‘Black & Silver’ that he wrote after having seen Valesquez’ Las Meninas. There have been many shows, exhibtions and residencies in the years since then. And now in my studio in the rural countryside, I produce oil paintings informed and enriched by 4 years at the Angel Academy, Florence learning the principles and techniques of Academic Realism. We all thirst for knowledge and for me that has lead to different methods of colour mixing, painting directly from nature, creating a ‘sight sized’ drawing which require a scaffolding of measurements which give glorious gravitas to a compostion. I think challenge is present in every painting. It is astonishing what the brush can achieve. Having a career that spans a length of time makes it difficult to pick out particular highlights. I left St Martins in the 70’s as a Filmmaker and Performance Artist but also with my first solo exhibtion of collage/drawings at the National Theatre. I travelled showing my film work as one of the Arts Council Filmmakers on Tour and, with fellow filmmaker William Raban, we were awarded a British Council grant to make an extensive tour of the USA. We also gained a British Film Institute grant to make an complex and poetic film based on Oscar Wilde’s story ‘Black & Silver’ that he wrote after having seen Valesquez’ Las Meninas. There have been many shows, exhibtions and residencies in the years since then. And now in my studio in the rural countryside, I produce oil paintings informed and enriched by 4 years at the Angel Academy, Florence learning the principles and techniques of Academic Realism. We all thirst for knowledge and for me that has lead to different methods of colour mixing, painting directly from nature, creating a ‘sight sized’ drawing which require a scaffolding of measurements which give glorious gravitas to a composition. I think challenge is present in every painting. It is astonishing what the brush can achieve. I hope that you, as a visitor, will make the journey to my studio and let me show you Three New Collections, some previous work and even some sketches and notes for a glance ‘behind the scenes’.