September

September

September.  The beginning of Autumn, my favourite season.  Mizzle, dew, spiders webs across the pathways, fruits to harvest and chutneys and jams to make.

I have made the decision to stop fretting about making more new work for my upcoming solo show in York next month.  My 'Seasons' series will look great on the newly painted gallery walls and I have picked a large painting on paper to go in the window.  Job done, feeling much less stressed now.  When I do get some time, I will go out to the studio and work on the two large paintings I started some weeks ago and finish off the artists' books I have printed.

Meanwhile, I have embarked on a mammoth chutney making session; I am running a fundraiser bottle and jar stall for frack free in just over a week's time; so far I have made Autumn tomato chutney using my windfall cooking apples and some tomatoes I got at a reasonable price in a local shop.  There are vegetables soaking in brine as I write, waiting to be made into pear and ginger Piccalilli tomorrow and I will harvest apples and plums from the garden for more chutneys and possibly some jam.  Sloe gin, matured for more than two years will also be bottled up (in small bottles, I don't want to give it all away!).  Along with contributions from other people, it should be a successful stall.  It's strange to be talking about domestic things here; but that's what my life is at the moment.

October

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Art as a path to the sublime: Agnes Martin at Tate

I have a bit of time today, so thought I would talk briefly about the Agnes Martin show at Tate:
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/agnes-martin

Unexpectedly, I found I had a day longer in London last weekend than I thought, so took the opportunity to see the show.

I can honestly say, it is one of the best exhibitions I have ever been to, and I've been to many.  First up: the place was almost empty, which is the best way for a gallery to be, even better for an Agnes Martin show, which requires deep looking and thought in a peaceful environment.

The curation and hang is superb; Martin was in the habit of re-acquiring early work in order to destroy it, here we have examples of her entire life's work.  The examples of early work, while not as interesting to me; they are derivative of other artists's works and movements ( Surrealism, Cubism for example); they were useful as part of the context of her development, as with any retrospective.  For example, Martin's colours remained pretty much the same throughout her career:  neutrals or mostly very pale hints of colours; like looking at colours behind a veil. Where she use stronger tones the colours are still mostly neutrals although stronger colour is occasionally evident.  I was fascinated by this thread throughout her life's work.  It is interesting to see how her work changed when she moved to New York, becoming full of life, expectation and experiment and the moment when she cast off curved lines to embrace the grid, vertical and horizontal line.

Each space provides the work room to breath; the fact that the gallery was almost empty helped of course, but these works require time and contemplation and the hang enables this.  One of the rooms, 7 I think, had cleverly screened a floor to ceiling window with fine white fabric, filtering the light but allowing the grid of the window design to show through, echoing the grids of Martin's work.

Martin's works on paper are equally enthralling, room 10, "presents a retrospective within a retrospective", to quote Tate.  Room 6  shows a collection of silk screen prints published by Parasol Press in 1973 that she had worked on in Stuttgart the previous year.  I found these interesting because Martin had expressed a need to "straighten out her lines" because she could "never paint straight enough".  The slight waverings of her lines in the paintings, creating optical wobbles and movement is one of the aspects of her work that I enjoy; the imperfections of the straight lines reflecting the frailty of human existence and evidence of the artist's hand at that particular moment in time.  However, this desire to straighten out the lines provides us with an insight into her nature; I suspect she was not all sensitive and vulnerable; there is a doggedness, a determination about Martin's continual exploration of line, grid and surface that shows strength of mind and character, whilst acknowledging the frailty of her mental health.  You'd have to be bloody minded to keep on making canvasses of the sizes she selected and to continue exploring her themes as she did.

Room 9:

"My paintings have neither objects nor space nor time nor anything - no forms.  They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down form"  Agnes Martin, 1966.

The highlight of the entire exhibition for me.  This suite of twelve paintings, The Islands, all white canvasses each 182.9 x 182.9 cm square, are utterly beautiful.  They are so sensitively curated; instead of the usual wire barrier that sounds an alarm should any visitor get too close, there is a platform about eight inches high all round the room beneath the paintings, keeping visitors the same distance from the work.  The walls are painted a shell like tone of palest lilac allowing the works to communicate without any visual struggle. These works require time and patience; I could have stayed in there all day and more. 

Tate describes them as Martin's most silent works.  Their surfaces require intense scrutiny to appreciate their surfaces and fine lines; Martin was interested in East Asian philosophy and spirituality and they reflect this.  I found myself becoming intensely emotional while looking at these works, it was a really profound experience.

On considering why this was so, I think it was the sheer scale of the group that reflect, for me, Martin's intense scrutiny of herself through painting.  I was not overwhelmed by them because I thought they referenced my scant knowledge of Martin's fragile mental health but because of the absolute commitment, determination and focus that these paintings express.

I am not going to describe the entire exhibition, I could not do it justice.  It is a wonderful example of how an artist can produce a profound body of work throughout their life by sticking with and honing one idea, building on it as understanding and experience grows.  I cannot recommend this exhibition enough, it is a "must see".

"You are what goes through your mind, whether you are aware of it  or not, you know, and if you can become aware of it and then if you can try and express it, you are an artist", Agnes Martin, video, Road Trip



(Quotes are taken from Tate literature and web site).

Interesting reviews:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/07/agnes-martin-retrospective-review-tate-modern

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/01/agnes-martin-review-tate-modern-grid-paintings

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/06/agnes-martin-tate-modern

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11643368/Agnes-Martin-Tate-Modern-review-immaculate.html

http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/agnes-martin-retrospective-review-tate-modern-london

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/agnes-martin-at-tate-modern-a-zenlike-quest-for-beauty-10290161.html

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March ends - an update

It has been a hectic end to the month.  Lots of activity for Frack Free Kirby Misperton and Ryedale, I finished the piece for "Democracy Rocks" and helped to set up the exhibition, which opened yesterday. Plus a good experience at a local printers, where I took a series of paintings that work as one piece, to be printed in a short edition of each, with a view to selling some.  I am actually preparing ahead for North Yorkshire Open Studios!

My piece for "Democracy Rocks", The Mud and the Sheen*, is a first for me, because I have never made an installation of my own work before.  I am pleased with the results, although, against my better judgement I have  scattered too much preparatory work at its base, losing the cleanness of where the loops of paper almost touch the floor.  If I ever install it again, elsewhere, I will avoid that.  In the end, it was installed near a back corner of the gallery, simply because it was easier to suspend the work from there and it looks good; the added height of the gallery ceiling enabled me to increase the height of the work too, making it even more relevant to the meaning of the piece.  I have really enjoyed the challenge of creating a two dimensional print and presenting it in three dimensions.

*p194, Jackson Pollock's Abstraction, Timothy J Clark, in Reconstructing Modernism, Art in New York, Paris and Montreal, 1945-1964.  Ed: Serge Guilbaut, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England.

The private view was quite well attended, there has been a lot of media interest too.  I hate posing for photographs, why is it that newspaper photographers always seem to work to such awful, cliche ridden ideas of what makes a good photograph?  It makes me laugh and shudder at the awful banality of it!

I enjoyed being part of the team that set up this extraordinary exhibition that includes work by young people and professional artists.  I can thoroughly recommend a visit and when you do, don't forget to post a vote for your favourite pieces and write on a post it note about what democracy means to you, using the polling booth.  You might even like to have a go at drumming on one of the decorated ballot boxes!

Seasons

Artist Ian Mitchell http://www.ianmitchell-art.com/  recommended Norton Print and Frame http://www.fineart.co.uk/directory/fruit-art-ltd_100032.aspx?DirectorySearchPageId=5  to me as the best people to approach about having some prints made of a series of paintings I made a couple of years ago. I continue to be fascinated by ideas that explore the passage of time.  Called Seasons, the piece comprises 12 paintings, 30 x 40 cm, acrylic on paper. An experimental series, each piece started out exactly the same, or as near as I could get it, given that they are paintings.  

March

Each successive piece was added to in the same way until I reached the final, twelfth painting.  The paintings each represent one month of a year and are a result of careful observation of colour and light levels.  NP&F have produced some superb photographs of each painting and I am really looking forward to going back in a few days to look at the proofs before we go ahead and produce a short edition of ten of each painting.  I plan to have two full sets available, and the rest can be sold separately.  The point of this exercise, because I would not as a rule produce prints of my paintings, is that I cannot sell any individual paintings from the originals as they collectively comprise one piece of work.  

September

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Life is SO busy ain't it?

Working at the end of the garden, cutting down all the weeds and hacking back the very overgrown Blackthorn hedging was pure pleasure with the heady perfume of this Philadelphus wafting in the air; it was almost intoxicating! 

Well, life is a busy as ever!  Which is why I have not blogged for a while, but I am still here and still getting on with things in the studio, house and garden.  Oh, how I long for the day when the house and garden is finished, so that I can spend more time exploring this beautiful area of North Yorkshire and having lots more fun with family and friends.  Did I say before, that we are expecting our first grandchild in July?  I have re-discovered the joys of crocheting blankets of late!  We are very excited and looking forward to meeting the small one.

Only a bit of painting to do in the new entrance at the back of the house; my new favourite place to sit with my tea in the morning.

Open Studios is over; I must remember to send in my feedback form and commission money. The second weekend was not as busy as the first, in fact, Saturday was pretty boring because I only had four visitors by eleven thirty in the morning and that was it for the day!  Never mind; Sunday was much better and I was very pleased to meet France-Leigh Hadrysiak from Chrysalis Arts, who made the effort to come and meet me and see my work.  It was very nice to be able to put a face to the name and France-Leigh's support is very much appreciated.  All my visitors were genuinely interested in my work, which is encouraging.  In all I made three sales of small works on paper but most importantly, more people now know about me than did before.

Another big bonus of the Open Studios is that I have become friends with three other artists in Ryedale; Catriona Stewart, Bridget Askew and Bridget Gillespie.  We met at each other's studios in between or just after the event.  It has been lovely to talk about our work over coffee and share ideas and experiences,  it quite brought a lump to my throat because it reminded me of doing this with my good friends I went to college with who are no longer here.

Since then, I have been finishing off some small paintings on board for the upcoming show at The White Room Gallery, Priestley's No. 36, Bootham, York.  The show is for the month of July.  I was unsure of the paintings at one stage, but now that I have worked on them further I am happy.  These are quite small works and tie in with my current theme and the Chinese sketchbook that was part of Sketch 13. Having them back from the framer, I am pleased with the work; framing always makes the work look so much better than I imagined it would.   I will deliver the works over to the gallery this afternoon; I plan to take all ten of the small paintings as well as some of the small drawings that were the origins of the whole series I am working on. Then I will select the best combination of pieces for the balance of the whole show.  I think it is important with a group show that the pieces work as well together as they possibly can.  I am showing with Sally Taylor and Lyn Wait who are both artists that I respect enormously.

A small selection from the work I will be taking to Priestley's this afternoon:

Connect, acrylic and mixed media on board

Fabricate, acrylic and mixed media on board

Song, acrylic and mixed media on board

Small drawing: The Departed series

Heart drawing

Meanwhile on the home front, things are gradually being finished off; I now have cupboard doors with the knobs on in my new porch as well as architrave and skirting boards.  Upstairs, as I type this, the architrave and skirtings are going on in our new shower room.  There are still some things to do but everything is coming together nicely.  After such a long slog, living with chaos all over the house and having to halt at one stage because we ran out of money, it is such a relief to see this stage almost completed.  I will have to do quite a bit of the decorating myself to save money.

The most exciting thing - our garden is finally about to get the hard landscaping  and turf laid! This is a real landmark in the whole process; we have lived for years with rough stones covering up the mud while the building work has taken place.  Again, we don't have much money for this but going along with our ethos of re-using materials, we have been lucky to find quite a lot of different types of slabs from kind people who were happy to donate them to our cause and glad to be rid of them in exchange for a fruit cake.  Mixed in with our bricks reclaimed from the build and some gravel, I think we are going to have a really lovely out-door space.  We have spent every weekend available clearing the garden in readiness.  There is still quite a bit of work to do but this weekend should break the back of it and I'll do the rest when I can next week, in between delivering the paintings to York and sorting out the hanging.  Exciting times indeed!

The courtyard area at the back of the house, finally cleared of all the building rubbish, ready for the hard landscaping and herb beds to be constructed.

We have a deadline for all this work in the garden; Pete's party in August.  There really is nothing like a deadline for getting things done.  We are looking forward to being able to enjoy the fruits of our labours after a very long and at times, bleak process.

I have no further exhibitions lined up for this year, which to be honest, I am quite glad about because it will give me time to do more work in the house, the garden and in the studio, to prepare and make the prints and artists' books for a submission in October.  That's do-able aint it?  !



Links to the artists I have mentioned in this blog:

Bridget Askew: www.bsaskew.wix.com/artist

Catriona Stewart: www.catrionastewart.co.uk

Sally Taylor: www.sallytaylor.net

Lyn Wait: www.lynwait.net

(Bridget Gillespie does not currently have a web site)

All rights reserved, images copyright the artist and PH Gough

Open Studios almost here, all welcome!

My home-made business cards, each one has a hand drawn image on, relating to current work

Preparing the studio.  I am so grateful to Pete, for helping me hang the work.

Well, it is almost upon me.  North Yorkshire Open Studios begins this Saturday.  All my plans for making new small new pieces and books were dashed when I got ill, so I have put up a mix of old and new work with quite a few pieces on paper, mounted on board for displaying in my hand made browser.  

Still some jobs to finish off but I think we are almost ready!

I have hand-made a mix of publicity materials.  Although a bit of a time consuming thing to do, the advantage of this is that mine do shine out from all the printed stuff produced by other artists.  Part of the reason for producing things by hand, (by utilising the IT skills of certain people to help me centre images and fit them into the space properly and who offered their time very kindly for free), is that I just didn't have energy to organise printed materials in time and also no money to pay for it anyway.

I have used a variety of methods for publicising the event, I sent out an illustrated email using Mail Chimp some weeks ago, I have hand made and hand delivered some packs containing a selection of my publicity material to people important to me and hand delivered some locally.  I have put posters up locally too.  

A selection of some my hand made and printed publicity materials with NYOS flyers

The meeting with the press photographer was a complete waste of time and I will not be bothering with it in future.  I was mentioned in a few words but none of the photos were used. Understandably, they want pictures in their paper that will appeal to most readers and my work just doesn't fit.  Never again.  Story of my life really; I just don't fit!  But, as they say; "you live and learn".

There was a meeting of artists within Ryedale participating in open studios last night, to swap publicity materials.  I realised that I didn't have enough of my remaining material left, so I made the flyer below, again with a bit of IT help and kindly printed by a local business.  I paid the princely sum of £7.60 for 500 A5 sized flyers, plus my time taken to design it and guillotine them when they were delivered, which isn't bad, I think you'll agree!

I really like the simplicity of this, and black and white is not only dynamic; it is cheap to produce!

Below are some shots of the studio in preparation for the event, it is actually a bit like a mini retrospective of my work:

Paintings I am currently working on for an upcoming show in York, propped up on my bench

I would like to wish all the participating artists lots of luck, good sales and enjoyment for this year's NYOS.

Better sign off, lots of jobs still to complete on my list. . . .


Thanks to Pete Gough for his support and practical help.

Gallery 1 - Paintings

At last, I have some decent photos of some of the work I have uploaded in earlier blogs.  So here is a gallery of some of the work that is or has been out and about so far this year:

A series of paintings on paper based on the seasons, each painting started exactly the same with successive layers added to each new piece, one for each month.  (If that makes sense!  Suffice to say, the last painting was much heavier and thicker than the first).

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

These twelve paintings currently adorn the walls of my local hostelry: The Ashfield Country Manor Hotel, Kirkbymisperton.  http://www.ashfieldcountrymanorhotel.co.uk/  They serve good beer and the food is really, really good!

Finally, some better photos of the paintings that were in my solo show "Marking Time", earlier in the year, in The Gallery, Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton le Hole.

Large Paintings on canvas:

New Beginnings (Spring)  7' 5" x 5' 8"

Many Endings (Winter) 7' 5" x 5' 8"

History Painting,  11' x 5' 2"

Smaller canvases 2' x 2':

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter (Sold)

Small studies on paper - 1

Spring Tally

Summer Tally

Autumn Tally

Winter Tally

Small studies on paper - 2:

Spring

Summer currently waiting to be uploaded.

Autumn (Sold)

Winter

Small studies on paper - 3

Spring

Summer (Sold)

Autumn (Sold)

Winter

I will upload the prints and drawings into another Gallery blog soon!  Please feel free to comment or ask me questions about my work.

All images copyright the artist, all rights reserved.