New work

Since making the ballot box piece, I have been considering painting as three dimensional, not just two.  It is early days and there are a lot of things I want to try.  So far, I have begun a very long piece on Chinese paper; it is at a very early stage, just white tally marks using gouache looking very ethereal.  I think I will continue with this using water colours and gouache, possibly ink, but I change my mind frequently when I am at this stage, with my head full of thoughts about the possibilities.

I have also bought a new stash of paper ready for when I have time to make some prints, lovely off white Somerset 300 gm. 

Another experiment I'm trying is to paint on a series of 2' x 2' ply boards, which I have hinged using canvas strips, (drilling through such thin board to screw metal hinges onto it would not have been possible).  I have several sections, and I am currently painting on two hinged sections (four boards). One possibility is to place the two pieces together like a concertina, thinking about my Chinese sketchbook that was accepted by Rabley.  Another, one I am leaning towards, is to stack the two sections, one on top of the other.  They are remarkably stable actually, so I don't think I will need additional fixings and anyway, I rather like the idea of an interchangeable painting.  I have only begun painting on one side of the boards so far; I intend to paint both sides, to create interesting juxtapositions of colour, mark making and angles.  This has made me quite excited, even though it is early days.

Always the ideas remain the same; the passage of time, seasons, memory and loss.  All the works are in progress:

January- Sketch 2013 tour and Tillyer at MIMA

I have been so engrossed in RAW business that I have not had much time for other writing, so here is a brief catch up of January activities:

Catherine Hill, Frome

My trip down to Frome for the opening of the first touring venue of Rabley Drawing Centre's exhibition Sketch on 10th January was good.  The show looked great and was really well attended.  I forgot to take my camera, so no pics, which is a shame.  My book was on a lower shelf in this venue and therefor more people were inclined to pick it up and take a look.

I couldn't be bothered to go back the next day to take some photos as there was too much else to see on Catherine Hill which is a steeply cobbled street lined with fab vintage shops and cafes. Happy days!  I bought a rather nice old suitcase to add to my collection of useful storage at home.


I have managed a new entry in my blog on a-n's Artists Talking site:

http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/previewPost/4223795




Other things I've been busy with:

Pete, pondering Skydancer, 2008, acrylic on stainless steel mesh.

The RAW trip to MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) on 16th January, where William Tillyer  showed us round his retrospective exhibition, Against Nature was a big success.  There were ten of us on the mini bus and another seven met us in MIMA, having made their own way there.  I actually went back for another, reflective look on the following Sunday.

William very generously walked us round the show, giving us an insight into the development of his practice both in terms of how ideas and motifs have appeared and how the use of materials and supports for the work have been explored.  

I was quite envious of his prolonged stays in Australia and Spain because I often think that in order to be able to make work that has real integrity based on a place then a stay of at least a month is necessary in order to get a real feel and understanding of the place.  And this would only entail gathering information in the form of history/folk law, sketches, colour studies, ephemera and photographs before any major pieces might be made.  (That's true in my case, anyway, although I have managed to make work based on specific places and ideas, from a stay of three weeks!)

This piece, Palmer Triple, (The Tapestry Paintings), 2013 is painted with acrylic on a fabric mesh, from the back, entailing a lot of walking round to the front of the work to assess progress.

William Tillyer is indeed a "quiet man"; he is softly spoken and modest about his work when he talks about it, and yet he is sure of his relationship with his ideas and art works; that came through very clearly.  By that I mean that he is completely absorbed with what he is trying to do; he is of course, aware of what is happening in the art world around him and has been throughout his career, but this has not swayed him from the path he chose.  He explores concepts of landscape; land, sky, clouds, space and, in the instance of the work made in Australia; the colour, shape and patterns of buildings within their surroundings.

I think this is one of the attributes of all the good and great artists - they develop their selected language and ideas across their entire career.  And it is the ideas that lead the work, not the "look" of it;  these artists are open to new approaches, techniques, supports and generally trying stuff out to see if it can help express their ideas, they are good at letting things happen too and they don't care if their work fits with current art world fashion or not.

I was fascinated to see how William continued to use the grid from the very early days right up to the present; how it developed from a painted or printed one to an actual one in terms of the supports he uses such as stainless steel or fabric mesh, both construction materials in their own right now appropriated by him to support /become part of his painting.  Married together with the use of colour and brushwork to express his experience of landscape, the ideas of the natural form and more rigid, man made constructs, it makes for interesting work with sometimes quite interesting divisions and struggles going on within it.  

I loved the humour of an early piece, Twelve Stacked Clouds, 1966; as well as the restrained observation it contains. It is a metal plate rack painted a beautiful shade of sky blue with cardboard cloud shapes  painted white slotted into the spaces where plates would have been placed.  This sense of fun was also evident in the large piece, The Age of Anxiety / Figure in a Landscape, 2002; constructed of birch ply it forms a sort of screen either side of which is a table top protruding from it with a stool that corresponds to the height of each "table".  Each side of the screen is painted with great confident strokes of colour; the usual blues and greens with yellow ochre and indian red, referring to landscape.  Wryly, William spoke of the missing figure while, with the words, "I am the only person allowed to do this", he calmly pulled out one of the stools, sat on it and proceeded to become the "figure in a landscape" of the title.  

As for the water-colours; truly awesome!  It is interesting to me that many of our members seemed to prefer the one that was on the wall outside the upstairs gallery; it depicted stormy light across a landscape but I had winced inwardly at a small tree depicted in a dark hue somewhere in the middle ground.  I didn't think it was necessary to put a tree in there when the use of colour and brushwork spoke of land and trees and sky anyway.  I was quite pleased that William didn't seem to like this work very much either and I suspect for the same reasons as I have just described.  His water-colours are very large and the skill with which he manipulates the paint and colour is quite extraordinary, using huge brushes and sweeps of paint to express that sense of being in the landscape with it all around and the weather touching you.  I admire them very much and am grateful that he is continuing the illustrious line of water-colourists from this country who were also able to manipulate the medium with such skill as well as having a profoundly beautiful eye for colour.  (Turner, Cotman, Palmer and many more)

Despite having spent some time in MIMA already that day, signing catalogues, William very kindly stayed for a few more minutes to sign some for RAW members.  It was a real pleasure to meet him and listen to him talk about his work and I shall remember much of what he spoke about for a long time.

Still Life in the Chinese Room (from the Metal Mesh Works), 1978.  Acrylic on steel mesh, wood and cardboard.  One of two or three pieces I wanted to take home!

This last week of January I have been on a visit to London and overseeing boiler installation work yet again,  plus a visit to my studio for a brief day's work.  More of this in the next post!

Lists for sanity

Happy new year!

Phew!  The last of our beloved family have departed after a wonderful gathering; there were nine of us by new year's eve.






Now it really is time to settle down to work.  To stem the rising panic that always threatens to engulf me when I know there are various deadlines looming that I do not want to miss I make lists.  I call them my "Lists for sanity", because they really do help me to stay calm and keep everything in perspective.

With everything so chaotic just before Christmas due to builders still being on site, I did not have time to do any work and as a consequence, I now have some work to make quite quickly for exhibitions.  So this month's list looks like this:

• PV for first leg of tour, Sketch 13 is this coming Friday in Frome, Somerset.  I have already contacted my sister who lives nearby to arrange a visit.
• International Postcard Show, Surface Gallery, Nottingham.  Deadline for arrival of submissions: 6pm, Friday 10th January 2014.  I have at least started these but there's not much time to finish them!
• Sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project must be in the post by 15th January at the latest to qualify for the tour.  www.sketchbookproject.com   I have not even started this yet, so it's going to be a bit of a challenge to complete in time although I do have ideas that have been swimming around in my head for months.
• Submission to Ferens Open takes place between 13 and 28 January.  I am still considering this, trying to decide what to submit if I decide to enter again this year.
• w0budong: 10th – 16th March 2014 Three Piccadilly Place, Manchester M1.  I need to plan the delivery of my large painting for this exhibition.  http://w0budong.wordpress.com/

All this, in between a visit to Frome on Friday and to London to see the Klee exhibition among others at the end of the month, will keep me pretty well occupied.  I think that making some work quite quickly might be a good experience though; I can tend to take too long on pieces some times and it will be interesting to see how the postcards and the sketchbook work out.  I will post some photos as soon as I have something to show.

You may be interested to know that the w0budung web site (link above), has a discussion page, which I have not contributed to yet but I plan to.  There is also a Pinterest page with relating imagery that we have begun to compile:
http://www.pinterest.com/bodpod43/w0budong-texts-without-meaning/

There is also work to do for Ryedale ArtWorks. . . . .

Happy January, at least we are not snowed in like last year!

Tiredness Kills: Take a Break!

I am too tired to write my usual full blog since returning from down South.  The builders are back on site and a potential major problem has already been identified and sorted out (I hope).  The title of this post comes from the motorway warnings I seem to have been seeing constantly just lately, and it is a reminder to myself to not push too hard.

However,I had a day in London on Friday and  I can report that the following exhibitions are very good:

• Mira Schendel, Tate Modern.  Absolutely fascinating and absorbing as well as beautiful.
• Richard Rogers; Inside Out, Royal Academy (Burlington Gardens): inspiring.  I feel full of hope when I read Rogers' words and see his models for human, urban living.
• Li Songsong; We Have Betrayed The Revolution, Pace Gallery, Burlington Gardens. Great slabs of gutsy paint.  Loved them.  

I also saw Mexico at RA, but was too distracted by my lack of time to look at it carefully- I was not that impressed by the show but there is a good early Guston.  I didn't have time to see William Tillyer's work in Cork Street and I was sad about that.  

The reason I went down South again was to attend the seminar for SKETCH 2013 on Saturday. It was very interesting to hear the speakers talk about their own approach to keeping sketchbooks.  The discussion afterwards was thoughtful, although at present I cannot really recall much of it.  I am sure it will come back once I have some calm, quiet time.

I arrived home on Sunday afternoon with a little time to clear the kitchen of most of its contents in readiness for the great opening up of the new doorway and resulting dust and was up at the crack of dawn to finish the job before the builders came on site.  Then this afternoon, I was off to Scarborough for the second session of the short WEA course I have enrolled on entitled Ten Twentieth Century Poets.  Jonathan Brown our remarkable teacher enlightens and truly informs;  I always leave feeling completely uplifted.  I look forward to next week.  

Tomorrow, once I have checked the builders are OK, I'm off to Thirsk and from there Andrew Dalton and I are going to Leeds to discuss possibilities for the RAW flagship exhibition.

Meanwhile, I am considering participating in next year's North Yorkshire Open Studios and have sent off for the info pack.  I am longing to get back into the studio and at this rate, it will be the cold winter before I do, but I am learning to keep the faith and go with the flow, using my sketchbook to make small studies and put my thoughts down.  I am continuing to read, so it is not wasted time.

SKETCH 2013

General installation shot of the exhibition in the gallery space at Rabley Drawing Centre

The Rabley Drawing Centre is nestled in a soft green valley in Marlborough, Wiltshire, situated in a beautifully converted barn. I imagine that to attend courses here would be a real delight; their print making fascilities are pretty good and if I lived in the area would certainly attend some of their workshops.

 I am delighted to be part of this exhibition of fascinating glimpses into the thinking of other artists.  Many thanks to artist director Meryl Ainslie for curating the show, which allows visitors to handle and look through the books, (cotton gloves provided).   It is a refreshing change to the usual glimpse at one or two pages through the glass of a cabinet. 

My book is on the second shelf from top, far left.

I am looking forward to the seminar on 28th September despite the long drive down. http://www.rableydrawingcentre.com/index.htm  

The fact that the exhibition is touring to other venues in 2014 is a real bonus, especially for me as I work hard to establish myself as a serious artst after moving up to North Yorkshire.

HUZZAH! My book has been accepted for SKETCH 2013

I am delighted that my Chinese sketch book, entitled "Control, Chaos, Counting, Dreaming", has been accepted for SKETCH 2013.

It is the first time I have entered this prestigious open submission and I am excited that the exhibition will tour.  

It opens at Rabley Drawing Centre, Marlborough, Wiltshire http://www.rableydrawingcentre.com/  on Monday 16th September and continues until Saturday 12th October.  

From there it goes to Black Swan Arts Centre, Frome, Somerset in January to February 2014 and finishes at Plymouth College of Art from 17th March to 11th April 2014.

To see devlopment shots of this book click on this link to my facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.503294246416852.1073741831.351715314908080&type=3