The Tick And The Tock Of Miss Betty Pea
The origins of Betty Pea are that she’s from an alternate land, a fairy tale place, and was born of the pea that was beneath the Princess and the Pea’s
bed. The pea was planted in a bottle and grew into an unusual plant with strange pods: within these pods grew Betty. Her food came from the peas and flowers, and she drank the water that dripped in from the neck of the bottle. In this environment Betty remained, until she was kidnapped and her bottle smashed: this is where her story begins.
Guy McKinley’s work will be more than familiar to those who’ve taken an interest in such things, particularly in and around Manchester and especially in Common. He worked on the first two exhibitions we ever had here at Common, as well as then bringing his friends from the Dot The Eyes collective over from across the country and Europe two years in a row to paint the place over a weekend, or two. He’s a regular fixture down at Eurocultured each year doing way more gassing than painting and, recent amongst his many, many projects, he had some rather good work up at the newly opened Carhartt shop on Oldham Street.
Guy doesn’t just paint and draw characters, he invents the whole worlds his characters inhabit and this exhibition at Common, with its epic wall-filling scenes and original paintings and limited edition prints (all for sale of course), will only hint at the excitable happenings of Betty Pea, her soul mate Bruno, and their many adventures amongst tiny birds, enormous airships, evil robots and time travelling.