According to an already half full Guest’s Book, RP Browne’s APEX and The Crypt Gallery London are a successful match. Here’s some:

I’m truly glad for this choice which initially was not an easy one to take. As mentioned in previous posts the space is really special, full of character and atmosphere. You don’t have to be an architect to realize how those caryatids guarding a beautiful red door make up for a great entrance, or how right after it a soft cascade of stone steps brings you down into a different world altogether, in this case, beneath “the crisp, urban crust”.

During my first visit last year to the gallery though, I had serious doubts as to whether to exhibit here. I immediately worried about the venue imposing over my (or any) work; I thought my efforts might not be up to the challenge.

Now that the APEX pieces sit in not just well, but perfectly comfortable on the vaulted walls and passages of the gallery, I feel very happy and yes, also relieved…this one is a match where a draw feels like a win for the two of us!

If you’ve been following closely the progress of the APEX project, then you already know this story. For everyone else I’ll make it short.

From the very beginning of the series I had this image in my head, and made several sketches (see APEX on the pipeline).It was a natural spin-off of the piece “Water”, previously called “The swamp”, where I made a landscape merging New York and London’s skylines on the back of a croc which lied motionless underwater.

For some reason I left it there; the piece seemed too ambitious and I lacked the technical clarity to address it. So I carried on with other parts of the project.

However, while visiting the Dublin Zoo, the piece was brought  back to my mind. A croc’s green and greedy pair of eyes looking from a position of power (thankfully from behind a safety glass) somehow elicited my artistic ambition… I had to give this one a try!

The technical problems, of course, remained. How was I going to make a credible Manhattan background and blend it with a perfectly positioned croc, as in the one of the photos taken in the Zoo?

The first attempt, which I painted in a small format (60 x 80 cm), disappointed me. It wasn’t nearly as crudely “in your face” as I had envisioned it. For the second time, I gave the idea further time to mature.

And then one day everything changed. I saw it immediately, right there in front of me and a hundred more consumers: the raw material and technical solution altogether. It was even framed and ready to be placed in the trolley for check out…in the decoration area of IKEA!

A motif replicated and sold by the thousands in as many IKEA outlets all over the globe, was going to become a unique base for that powerful but elusive idea. And so it was; I finally begun the painting…

Here’s the before and after. The “after” would eventually become the calling card and poster of the exhibition, as I’m sure some of you’ve found out checking your recent post.