To be asked to be a selector for this exhibition requires not only a discerning eye, but quite a strong nerve. One is asked to nominate and select some sixty works by artists one knows, or whom one admires from a distance, and then compete with the other five selectors to find more work from a very large submission. All the work chosen is revealed as your selection and personal weaknesses and prejudices will emerge. As other selectors have asked in the past: "What will it look like on the wall?".

My collecting was triggered almost 40 years ago when my wife and I bought a watercolour for a few pounds in a Sussex village. We now possess too many paintings and drawings by the same artist but we like them (or almost all of them). Our tastes have changed and matured and our collecting has taught us a lot. We have met artists whose work we have bought and sometimes (mistakenly?) not bought. I suppose one of my greatest mistakes was not to purchase a painting by the late Euan Uglow which was in the first Jerwood Painting Prize in 1994. I recently met up with the painting again in a retrospective exhibition of his work and doubled my regret.

I hope my selections have to an extent veered towards some young artists, some Jerwood winners will be there as well as painters from the recent Being Present exhibition at the Jerwood Space. There will be portrait painters but not necessarily portraits.

Many of my nominated artists have been generous to come in and their dealers have been open-handed and encouraging.

In the end it is a selling exhibition of "small sized" work but of large talent. The artists must benefit alongside the Discerning Eye charity to open up collecting to a wide audience. Only buy what you like but look hard & long, feel some passion and above all have fun doing it.

 

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