Places to Paint: Adebanji Alade's Bath Painting Marathon

Extract from Gallery brochure for Adebanji's Painting Marathon

In 2009, Adebanji Alade won the inaugural Bath Prize Plein Air Award.  This was a new competition in 2009 for new work inspired by a location in the city of Bath.

Artists entering the competition are also invited to compete for a special plein-air prize of £2,000 to be awarded to the best picture completed largely at the chosen location. 

In participating in the competition, Adebanji visited Bath for the very first time and was enormously impressed by the city, its setting and architecture. 

He decided to try and paint ALL of Bath in one year.  His aim was to have an adventure in recording an entire city from different places at different times of the year - and to produce as many paintings as he could.

It hasn't been an easy task, but I decided to dream! And dreams do come true! This year I decided to do 500, 6" x 8" paintings of London, I discussed this with Mike Porter of the Bath Gallery. He thought I was crazy but then he said, "can you put that on hold and do 250 of Bath?". I instantly agreed! I said, why not, just get me somewhere to stay and I'll paint morning, noon and night!

Accommodation was duly found - how nice to find a gallery which is prepared to support and believe in a painter in this way. 

Then between July and October 2010, over a period of eight weeks spent in the city (with breaks), Adebanji produced 212 paintings of Bath with dimensions 6" x 8".  Some were diptychs and there is one which is comprises six paintings in one!

Adebaji Alade's Bath Marathon - extract from The Bath gallery catalogue

The paintings are currently in an exhibition at The Bath Gallery, 6 Bridge Street Bath, BA2 4AS.  It had a very successful opening on December 4th and continues until December 31st.  Most works are framed and the majority of painting are under £600.

This December, we will be hosting the Art Event of the year. We are exhibiting the first 212 paintings of the 500 images of Bath being produced by Adebanji. Single framed pieces will be priced at under £600. View the entire catalogue here.

This astonishing project, an attempt to paint all of Bath in a year, is truly a dedicated tour de force by a remarkably dedicated artist.

Adebani Alade presenting "The Circus" 15 x 120 cm oil on board. 
It is a complete panorama of one of Bath's uninique landmarks and archutectural highpoints.

Below is a video of Adebanji Alade painting a small townscape in Bath ( he sings too!).

Below that are links to his blog posts about his painting marathon.  They include a post about lessons learned from tackling an enterprise of this sort.

Links to Adebanji Alade's blog posts

• Everything about the Bath Marathon 
• Lessons from Bath Marathon 1 
• Lessons from Bath Marathon 2 
• Lesspns from Bath Marathon 3 & 4 
• The Bath Gallery

To view the entire exhibition you need to email the gallery and ask for a password to view the pdf catalogue online.