Top of page

Acrylics with Joel Kirk  (March 2017)

An invitation to RAG is always a joy and this was to sit in on a demonstration by local artist Joel Kirk (www.joelkirkhimself.com and tel.no 01702 477041). Joel is a commercial artist who sells largely through auctions in Edinburgh but whose works have gone all over the world. The point of this evening was to demonstrate the use of acrylics. For the artists of RAG this was an opportunity to sit, relax and enjoy watching ‘the artist’ at work.

Joel explained that this was a commissioned work and the client wanted a white tiger on a black background. His ‘board’ was MDF with black emulsion as the sealer. Already he had sketched out the animal and would be bringing it to life with the acrylics. The starting point, he emphasised, needs to be the eyes and once they are established the rest can follow - and so it did. If you thought this was the finished article, think again! After this evening he would take the work away and probably work on it for another week until he was satisfied with the end product. This was very much, therefore, a preparatory piece.

Although we were invited with ‘no strings attached’ we always feel such an event warrants comment and recognition but with people sitting in rows for a fairly static evening, how to do that, especially without being a distraction while the artist works and possibly not everyone being keen on being photographed. It’s an art group so here is an attempt at an artistic representation of the evening. Thank you all for your invitation and tolerating us clicking in the background. Hope you can cope with this end result, so here it is, an evening with Joel.