The Dean

We went to the Dean Gallery today to see the BP portrait award exhibition. The standard of painting was very high. One of the 'rules' on entering, is that the portraits are mainly done from life but I have to say that after inspecting them all closely I believe most of them to have been done from photographs. It's allowed for photographs to be used as reference material and a lot of the artists have stated that photographs were used in conjunction with sittings. My recent experience of taking photographs led my eye straight to certain things within the paintings that looked photographic. There was a definate blurring, softness and out of focus look (to some) that if painting from life you just wouldn't see. It doesn't bother me in the least if the paintings have been taken from photographs or not, I just wanted to say that some most definately were.

The Dean Gallery is full of fabulous backdrops for photography. I'll be back for more. I used to work for the National Galleries Scotland in their shops so I find it hard to go in without that uneasy, uncomfortable feeling that someone will recognise me, although the Galleries have a high turnover of staff (crap pay) so 6 years later there's very few people left that would have been there when I was there.