Documentation: good morning midnight, a solo exhibition by Derek Bassey.

I came across Derek Bassey a few years ago through instagram so, my origin story when anyone asked me how 1 knew the artist was alas that we became acquainted via good old instagram. Optimistically, I'm not ashamed by this story, in fact I believe it makes my introduction to the artist a lot more organic. Makes me feel like it was meant to be.

I was first captivated by Derek's Toni Childs oil on paper sketch, followed by an oil on canvas painting titled Meet the Sundays -which I pray to own one day- What drew my attention the most was the simplicity of the strokes on both paintings that were still able to grab and hold my attention. I later came to realize, after a bit of exposure therapy and from my own understanding, that this technique was quite consistent across other bodies of Derek's work I came across. Fast forward to this present day, where I was finally able to see a few of the paintings I had admired from afar, as well as a few new and unseen ones and I was just as blown away like it was my first encounter all over again.

Generally, I was incredibly happy to just be in the same space as the paintings and overall impressed by the talent exuding from all of them [the paintings]. Love, admiration, awe, and pride filled the room on that opening night. I mean I had to go opening night hehe. Well, I immediately fell in love with the painting titled Marketplace. Just right away, the contrast between the softness of the earth/neutral tones used to paint the figures and the sharpness of the bright red used to paint what I interpreted as tomatoes, almost immediately held my gaze. Then I took a lap and found more new favourites, a few old ones and met intriguing people.

Alas, that's enough yapping on my end. Peruse through the photos I took!