Per Kirkeby, Tate Modern

Last week we visited the Tate Modern in London, especially to see the exhibition of Danish painter Per Kirkeby. Previously I had seen a few of his paintings in books and was intrigued to see his paintings in the 'flesh'.

We visited the gallery on a Wednesday when it was very quiet and as the weather was not so good our first port of call was the cafe:

In the first rooms Per Kirkeby's paintings were very much like pop art but more subtle. Further on in the exhibition he had been using blackboard paint as a base and created many different layers of mixed media on the top. His work was quite varied from watercolours to immense canvases, although the colours and techniques that he uses pulls all his work together. Per Kirkeby was trained as a geologist and this is evident in both the way that he treats his media as if investigating the build of of different layers and also in the subjects that he chooses to represent.

The exhibition was really good and what was unusual was that there were not many people in the galleries and so we virtually had the exhibition to ourselves. This was good from the point of view that we could really get a good look at the paintings without having to manoeuvre around people. It was really worth visiting and appealed to both myself and my daughter. I Iook forward to seeing more of Per Kirkeby's work in the future.