January is dormant

January is one of the few missing months in my Life is not still series. So, at the beginning of this month I added the following to my to do list; “Collect/paint vase of canal flora for January”…..it hasn’t happened, but I know why and, it’s probably the same reason as last year. January is dormant.

It’s not just lockdown, it’s as if the world itself is lying quietly in wait, resting, preparing for the year ahead. The flora hasn’t moved on from December, the barges are battened down, a dusting of snow last weekend dampened the sound, even the ducks seem to be in hiding although, I have seen the blue flash and red breast of the kingfisher and three brave swans bashing their way through the thick icy waters.

Studies of Hart’s Tongue Fern

One plant which has attracted my attention is the tropical looking Hart’s Tongue Fern (Asplenium Scolopendrium) which grows on the verges all year around between the woodland and towpath. I’ve made some studies in paint and pencil of the long glossy leaves, with their fluted edges and striking pattern of spores. These studies will be tucked away until next January when I will revisit and work from them.

Meanwhile I’ve been working from some of the Canal bridge photos and data I collected during November’s lockdown (given I can’t travel to collect anymore at the moment!) I’m experimenting with the concertina book format, as if the viewer is walking along the towpath and viewing the bridges from either the east or west depending which end of the book you start. It’s a working maquette, trialling different media and ways to depict the bridge images. All a bit literal and figurative at the moment, but evolving slowly.

Slow. An apt word for January and life under lockdown but, slowing down and extra time, brings opportunity to reflect and, the boundaries of constraint forces creativity.

Luscious leftovers – September

Luscious colours from leftover dye

No poisonous plants this month, just edible ones and I’ve completed my “start of Autumn” ritual by making pots of blackberry jam. I’ve also started making a mental note of the sloe trees ready for picking in October.

The Reedbeds on the canal are covered with the soft white fluff of Willowherb seeds, interspersed with stinging nettles and brown spiky teasel’s, and the hedgerows are full of brambles, elderberry and rosehips. I haven’t drawn any new plants this month, instead focusing on last Septembers paintings and working from them onto cloth.

Painted Study – abstract of Sept Still life vase

Sept Vase on cloth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to paint an abstract interpretation of last September’s Still life onto cloth. My approach to image making is always fairly low tech, here I have used thickened procion dyes, sectioning off areas with masking tape or sticky back plastic and,  applied the dye using old bank cards, the end of a pencil, kebab sticks or a brush. Further lines and marks and shapes will be added with stitch.

Alongside this I have painted or printed a small bundle of patterned cloth and immersion dyed some solid colours with the leftover dye.

September Cloth bundle

And so the dyes and pots are all washed up, the studio boards cleared, these fabrics will be packed away with the drawings until next September when I will return to move them forwards again. It doesn’t seem a moment since last year when I drew the original drawing…

Colour Palettes to Dye for

The canal has a very different colour palette to my previous coastal themed work. Predominantly shades of green & brown landscape and water, graphic black & white locks and bridge structures and touches of bright colours in the flora, birdlife and barges. This weekend I’ve gone back to basics with some dye colour mixing to teach myself some new palettes.

I have always tended to work (and love) a muted rainbow palette, those mixed with all three primary’s and to include slightly jarring colour combinations. Greens and brights are not colours I have worked with much. However, the opportunity to work with a wider range of colours in relation to my canal series is one of it’s exciting possibilities.

Putting one foot in front of the other

It’s that age old creative wisdom that when you are stuck, just keep working, just keep turning up at the page, the canvas, the needle and eventually ideas will begin to meld again.
There is a similar wisdom in long distance running/walking;

“when you are feeling good push and when you are not just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

The last few weeks I have been stuck, I had reached a certain point in my experiments and didn’t know where to go next, so I did a bit of active procrastination, cleared my studio table and design boards, got out my sketchbooks and research and revisited my original trains of thought, I pulled out a few key images to put up on the walls and then finally I took myself off to my local life drawing class to force myself into activity.
AND ping, breakthrough. I took a screen print I had stretched and primed to paint/draw on top of (it’s been sat doing nothing in the corner for a while) and whilst the result is by no means polished, the idea definitely excites me with it’s potential.

Screen print, stretched and primed as a canvas

Life drawing/Painting on top of screen printed canvas

I have known for a while that I want to do a series expressing the female condition (from my perspective rather than any traditional notion – an idea that I am not fully ready to share in words yet) and to combine this with my abstract imagery based on found objects and the landscape (my symbols of experience and memory). The research I had collected was pointing me in the direction I want to go, I just didn’t seem able to make that leap to the next phase, I was still working the two elements (abstract and figurative) separately.

I know I lack some of the skills to bring the two together and so as much as anything the next few years will be a learning curve, with no doubt some horrid results along the way (to be expected when you learn anything new). Next steps,  I’ve arranged a friend to model some poses for me to draw and I have regained the enthusiasm to create more screen/mono/resist printed cloth which I can stretch/prime and use as backgrounds for my paintings.       I am off and running again….

 

 

Blobs & back to life drawing

I’ve been continuing my screen printing experiments using my pebble imagery as inspiration (my blobs as someone put it),  repeating screens over a larger surface; over laying colours/tones to create secondary shapes; working the negative image, changes in scale and repeating screens along a length of cloth whilst tying to make the repeat invisible.

Some interesting marks are building up on the drop cloth too.

I have no idea where this is all going at the moment but i’m enjoying the process, and learning new ways of working.

I’ve also returned to life drawing. A 2 hour drop in session where I can zone out and draw. I havent been for months and i’m rusty, struggling to see proportion again, a reminder of the importance of consistent practise. I sketch the shadows in loosely with watercolour before overdrawing with charcoal and pen.

Design boards are up!

In the last few weeks i’ve got my design boards up on the wall (they’ve been propped against them for 18 months). It’s made such a diffference and prompted me to distil my sketchbook ideas and notes into two clear projects.

Back in my post of July 5th I talked about mastering my craft and spending some time to hone skills in printing/painting which would allow me to reaslise a mixture of figurative and abstract works. I’m making progress; i’ve been experimenting with screen printing images inspired by my 100 Pebbles (post of March 8th), particularly focussing on registering the print layers. I’m restricting myself to layering of 3 colours (black, golden yellow and Cerulean), partly so I can focus on the process and partly to see what colours can be built up with just layering and mixing.

Using clear Gesso I have stretched and primed one of my prints ready to use as a drawing/painting ground experiment. I’ve added some collage and stitch as texture into the surface.

Do we ever get to achieve the intention we can visualise in our minds?

 

Who has time for TV?….

This week has been a mixture of drafting a proposal and cv; preparing and sending photos for catalogue/potential press release; a life drawing class and stitching, stitching, stitching (and people wonder why I dont need a TV!)

Life drawing on fabric – experiment

Meanwhile, the challenge has been to start my mind resolving the composition on “Cloth painting no.2 (I really need better titles!). I know the composition is wrong, I just haven’t worked out why yet so I have hung it up to live with for a while in the hope that concious and sub-concious attention will solve the problem. Yes there are compositional rules; the rule of thirds, balance of light and dark, lines and where they lead the eye, focal points etc, but sometimes its more instinctual.

Mussel series. Cloth Painting No2. Work in progress.

Sometimes problems are there to move us forward. I have been considering for a while why I always finish with a layer of stitch and why I dont continue to overpaint layers after. In resolving this composition I may have to go back in with paint, dye or other media….and so maybe it will be the catalyst I needed to make that transition.

 

 

 

 

The Mussel series – reflection

Work in progress

So living with my paintings on the floor worked and over the past couple weeks I have finished one large cloth painting, all sleeved and signed ready for hanging, and i’ve auditioned, chopped and started stitching the third in the series which was just in cloth state before I went away…all amidst the hussle bussle of christmas prep.

As I draw close to the end of the year and also the end of my latest series I thought it was time for some reflection. I’ve been working on this series for nearly two years and sometimes I forget to celebrate the end/fruition of ideas in my eagerness to explore new ones. This time I want to pay more attention to another aspect of being an artist – exhibiting – sharing my work with the public – getting feedback and looking at the work afresh myself with the eyes of a viewer (not maker).

For the past 10 years I have largely shown in group exhibitions, open studios or relied on opportunities that came my way. This fitted with the early years of finding my artistic voice and confidence in my work. Moving forward my challenge will be to research spaces alongside the work, and learn to write proposals, apply to galleries or other venues and make contacts (something I find hard as an introvert) so that visualising where and how work will be shown will become part of the artistic process.

I bumped into one of my old university tutors this week, someone I admired and who on the public face has been very sucessful with her art/textiles.  She has always made her art her business and so it was refreshing to talk to her and learn that the perception was wrong,  behind the face of sucess was uncertainty & floundering business models BUT a self belief and determination to make things happen and take a risk. Self made and propelled. Making her own opportunities and changing when they dont work anymore. Self investment.

Slowly, with age comes the wisdom that art is an occupation like any other with a requirement for business skills, hard work and a sense of the can do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking is working

When I have a seemingly non-productive week, I remember something my University tutor once said around the importance of thinking and how thinking is also working.

Having finally put the ink opague layers on (before it’s final layers of stitch and applique), I’ve been looking at this painting for a while and I’ve shown it to a few trusted friends for critique. Something needs to be done on the large white expanse. The  cotton surface is too flat/matt and the white too uniformly white to be interesting in such a large area.

My mind recalls the Gamblin podcast on Savvy painter where they discuss the merits of different white paints and also my little textile samples in which I incorporated different white material surfaces (silk e.t.c).

Conversations with friends have made me question why I feel the need to create functional cloth, and wonder whether in my next series I use these dye paintings as an underpainting for more traditional media, using applique and piecing to create different cloth surfaces for the initial canvas and using stitch under paint layers as marks and texture.

Meanwhile my hands have been busy, occupied by stitching the trimmings from the edge of a painting into little abstract cards to sell at the Unfolding Stories Exhibition at Harbour House next April. Sometimes I feel these little bits, made without concept and purely for aesthetic/compositional qualities are my most successful!?

 

little and often

I have always thought Art is an academic subject with research skills being key. I would say 90% of a project is about researching and refining ideas and thoughts into something visual. With 10% of the time realising the final pieces. The hard work lies in research.

So as I go about finishing some big cloth paintings ready for exhibition next year, I am also taking the opportunity to draw and read and experiment with some new creative experiences;

 I decided to put myself on the other end of the gaze this week and experience the other side of life drawing by posing as the life model. It’s a very liberating experience. I got to choose my own poses (15 in total) and so I was able to combine my knowledge of sports stretches with creating poses which would make interesting or challenging drawings…almost like using my body as a 3d drawing itself and combining my interest in movement (walking, swimming, Pilates) with my art.

I was fascinated by my ability to shut off in the pose, hold completely still and yet allow my mind to wander or focus, to zone out of the room. It made me reflect on how our bodies (which society normally dictates we cover or save for our significant others) are just shells and out true selves are the inner spirit.  (Hmmm a seed of an idea there to add to the pot)

 This week has been a typical “little and often” approach to creating, here is how it panned out:

Thurs -Drawing class – self portrait/features this week using a mirror, i’m not sure I really enjoyed looking at myself that closely!

Sat – I read and copied some exercises from a drawing book I’d borrowed from the library before returning it.

Sun – A blissful day of mixing dye and adding more layers of dye and batik resist to my large cloth paintings. Leftover dyes were used to vat-dye calico in my bath.

Mon – Admin for the CQ west exhibition at Harbour house next year, entry forms and artist statements. http://www.contemporaryquilterswest.org/

Tues – Life modelling & drawing.

Wed – Rinsed out dyeing