Over Them Hills - Common Bar, Manchester

A few months ago, myself and Mark Mottershead helped out with an exhibition at Common Bar in Manchester. This all came about through twitter when I stumbled upon a retweeted message in which Rabbit Portal (Matt Saunders) was asking for help in painting the walls and other bits. To me this was just an excuse to draw on the walls with paint pens again – but having Mark along made me realise how special this opportunity was – we were networking and he hadn’t done anything like this before.. it was great seeing his own enthusiam to being out of the studio, painting and enjoying his new love for Posca paint pens. However it didn’t feel like we were networking... it felt more like we were helping friends of ours with their work... basically we were just helping out and filling in large patches of colour to the already drawn out design of another artists work… but we managed to quiz Matt and Kristyna Baczynski in between all the painting.

The main advice we were given was to just get out there, be chatty, establish an online presence and then put that out everywhere too. It’s all about confidence (which is where I lack when it come to my work)… but all in all, it was a fun couple of weeks, taking the odd day off of uni to help out. I miss living in Manchester and being close to venues such as these where things like this always happen. There is always something happening in Manchester whether it is an art show, crafts fair or just a general meeting of artistic minds … being so close to these things I feel it would be easier for me to get some freelance work as I have already done so in the past…

Matt Saunders - site

Kristyna Baczynski - site