March 2024 - still experimenting
What I’ve been up to over the last few months
I haven’t posted for a while so here’s a quick recap: back in early November I was invited to work with fellow artist Beverley Roach at ‘Grow’ in Plymouth where Beverley was having a week’s residency. Later in the week we were joined by another friend - Beth Heaney - and we really enjoyed using the space and naturally occurring inks and paints made with plants, fruits and ground up from material found on Bev’s beach walks, whilst Beth did some weaving using willow sticks.
A printmaking friend who popped in to see us recommended that I buy a copy of ‘Experimental Printmaking’ by Mary Dalton and I have enjoyed working my way through several processes that she describes in her excellent book. So far I’ve tried using drypoint on card - which means you can cut it easily - combined with freehand mono-printing followed by using these pieces of drypoint card cut up smaller to print onto plaster. I’ve really enjoyed trying these methods out and next up is what Mary terms ‘Lithino’. I want to make layered prints and finding a method of hand drawing over the top of other prints - using paper lithography and lithino - is my next challenge.
In February we went to Edinburgh to see my son (who wasn’t there, long story) and had a lovely few days seeing exhibitions and visiting galleries and the Edinburgh Printmakers new space. I saw some original Joan Eardley paintings alongside Elizabeth Blackadder’s at the Scottish Gallery and the Printmaker’s Art at the SRA plus the annual watercolour exhibition that was showing some amazing work. The Fruit Market gallery had a lovely shop and two interesting exhibitions and then, completely saturated with art, we had a beautiful train ride home along the NE coastline.
The Printery in Mutley closed recently and our Camp printmaking group had gone dormant so in January I volunteered to start the group up again. So far we’ve met twice and once online, several new members have joined us and we’re hoping to do some printmaking events and show work at the Hatherleigh Festival in July. I’ve recently joined Drawn to the Valley which is a group of artists based around the geographical location of the River Tamar and I’m hoping to exhibit with them during the coming year.
Finally, I took a workshop in papermaking at Double Elephant print studios, Exeter given by Jim Patterson of Two Rivers Paper company (Watchet, Somerset) which was much harder to do than I thought it would be. My attempts were pretty useless being full of holes and uneven but it’s definitely something I’d like to try in the future.
Forgot to say - the tiny 3D cubes are in an exhibition called ‘Women Walking’ at the Falmouth Art gallery, Cornwall, from now until April 27th..!
The happy printmaker
A ‘new’ press and lots of experimenting this summer…
Lots has happened since last I wrote here. I bought a second-hand press from a good friend and since then I haven’t looked back. I’ve become a member of the FabLab community and have learned how to make my own perspex laser cut matrices that I’ve enjoyed layering over monoprints and collographs. All of the scrap pieces of paper I shall make into a sketchbook so that nothing is wasted… I’ve been experimenting with different ways to make collagraph plates; some are perspex, some are on mountboard and I’ve tried different ways of varnishing them - button polish shellac is my favourite, to date. I’ve been using different oil based inks, Hawthorn Stay Open and Caligo Safewash. Both are fine and I’ve been layering thin monoprints over collagraphs, very enjoyable. I don’t worry if a print doesn’t work out as I can use it in a collage or sew into it or make it into a book.
Several years ago I bought an old Singer treadle sewing machine that I haven’t used and an ex-colleague from Westonbirt came to visit and helped me to get it threaded and running. It’s really good fun and I can oversew all of the torn pieces of print and newsprint scraps into something more permanent. It has opened up a world of possibilities and after doing some research on Google I discovered that the machine was made in 1896 or thereabouts and amazingly it’s in fine running order. Being manually operated it’s environmentally friendly and I’m really excited by all of the possibilities on offer now.
Spring has sprung
Spring has arrived - sketching outdoors, using sketchbooks and the digital/handmade crossover
It seems a very long time ago that I posted here; since then, I’ve continued the investigation that I began on my MA into the crossover between the digital (starting with my photographs) and the handmade in my work. I like moving from one realm to the other and using these ideas, I’ve made some concertina books, taken some digital photographs into charcoal drawings and lino prints at Double Elephant studio in Exeter, made stitched and printed tissue paper and filled some sketchbooks doing plein-air painting in Central Park. These sketchbooks and photographs will be the basis of my work over the next few months.
In between trips back to see family in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, we’ve visited The Box to see some of their excellent exhibitions and have been to watch Plymouth Argyll in their quest for promotion this season. Nervous times ahead… I also had some more work shown at The Artmill Gallery, which was nice.
Double Elephant: https://www.doubleelephant.org.uk/courses
The Box: https://www.theboxplymouth.com/events/exhibitions Sue Williamson: Between Memory and Forgetting, a selection of wonderful collaged prints; Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings: Portraits (these are beautiful prints too) and Making a Mark: Dazzling Drawings from the Cottonian
Late December 2022
A brief round-up of the year and images of what I’ve been making and seeing
Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
It’s that time again, in those few quiet days between Christmas and New Year where it’s traditionally the time to look back over the last year, to pause, consider and reflect. (This blog isn’t about politics, so although we’re all affected by what has happened globally and nationally, I’m not going to comment on it.)
Looking back over the year since we moved to Plymouth, I’m very happy with everything that’s happened. I love living in a city and being so near Central Park there’s always somewhere to walk and observe. I’ve tried to draw and paint en plein air this summer and will begin that again in January. I’m working on a large body of work based on the park that will consist of paintings, drawings, prints and mixed media pieces. I have some work in the Artmill Gallery in Peverell and am delighted to say that 4 pieces have sold, which is really pleasing from the point of view of gaining credibility as an artist. I now share a studio with a fellow MA graduate at Grow, right next to The Box in the centre of town, and it’s lovely to belong to a small community again. We have plans to do lots of group things next year, which I’ll report here.
I’ve visited the British Art Show in Plymouth of course and have also managed to get across to Make Southwest’s hq in Bovey Tracey to see the joint exhibition by printmaker Anita Reynolds and ceramicist Kate Lyons-Miller entitled ‘Rippon’. It was well worth the trip and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the powerful and varied work on show. I especially liked Anita’s concertina books of prints. The drive over Dartmoor was also beautiful so we stopped to take photographs, something that I shall continue to do in 2023.
Make Southwest and Rippon: https://www.crafts.org.uk/all-exhibitions/ink-and-clay
Grow studios, Plymouth: https://www.growplymouth.co.uk/
Artmill Gallery, Peverell: https://www.artmillgalleries.co.uk/
November ‘22
This month the BAS9 has arrived in Plymouth and there’s lots to see. I’ve also taken a new studio at ‘Grow’ and have work in the Artmill Christmas show
This month sees the arrival of the British Art Show 9 in Plymouth and very interesting it is, too. On a personal level this is also an exciting time as a fellow artist and I have taken a studio in the ‘Grow’ building, next to the Box; we think this will lead to many other opportunities. I’m happy to say I will have 9 mixed media pieces on show at the Artmill Gallery, Peverell, Plymouth as part of their Christmas show that opens on Saturday 12th; the Private View is on Friday 18th 5-7pm. I’m a member of the CAMP group [Contemporary Art Membership Plymouth] and have a short film on show with them at the Vacancy Atlas, Cornwall Street.
I’ve recently been on a course at Dartington Hall (‘Dark River Rising’ led by Anthony Garrett) and have made several gouache paintings as part of a body of work based on the Dart. I’m also starting a project based on Central Park involving paint, print and stitch. Below are some images from BAS9 and from the last few weeks...
Autumn 2022
It’s been a long time since I posted but here are some photos of what I’ve been doing
It’s been a while but here we are again…I’ve had a busy summer that included a trip to Amsterdam and have just got back from Dartington Hall.
July 2022
Blog post for July 2022 - visits to different exhibitions, trying out ideas for larger projects
This month we’ve had several family visitors, my youngest son graduated from Sheffield University (with a 2:1 whoop-whoop) and it’s been very hot in parts, too hot to work, however I’ve managed to do a lot of things such as taking part on an excellent online course run by Sally Hirst called ‘Confident Composition’:
https://sallyhirst.co.uk/confident-composition/
Sally is also an art historian and educator and encouraged us to watch ‘the paradox of choice’ by Barry Schwartz, a very amusing and pertinent TED short talk made some ten years ago : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM&ab_channel=TED
I read a couple of books about Joan Eardley: https://joaneardley.com/ and a lot of the back catalogues of exhibitions of the Scottish Gallery on Issuu:
https://issuu.com/scottishgallery
I especially enjoyed ‘Towards Abstraction’ by John Brown and the catalogues on the exhibitions of Duncan Shanks; I found reading about how other artist’s plan and prepare their work very interesting . Reading about Joan again (she’s long been one of my favourite artists) made me do some sketching outdoors in Central Park and currently I’m working out ways of making these into screen prints at the Printery (where I shall be ‘Printmaker of the Month’ for August!)
Went to see the PV of the summer show at the lovely Make SW gallery in Bovey Tracey: https://www.crafts.org.uk/current and especially enjoyed the large set of prints by Barton Hargreaves and the colourful jewellery for sale in the shop. Luckily I didn’t take much money with me so couldn’t buy anything.
Also saw the AUP (formerly Plymouth College of Art) BA Hons 3D craft summer show in Regent Street, very interesting work all made to a high standard, and particularly loved the fishing-industry based plates and the work of Suzi Humphries.
Print wise, I’ve been working on making tusche screen prints with Sue Lewry, one of my contemporaries on the MA (https://www.suelewry.com/projects), because tusches give you a more painterly way of making screen prints; if you’re interested see: https://lascaux.ch/en/products/brushes-printmaking-sets-various/lascaux-tusches - I’ve also been making hybrid screen prints by drawing with a tusche then with linocut overprinting based on the seed-heads of cow parsley to see how it works out; I really enjoy the ‘drawing’ part of the process so I’ll continue my experimentation. I want to make some larger scale hybrid prints too so I have lots to think about…
Working with Sue who is very focused and organised made me realise that I needed to move myself forward business-wise so I’ve been on several boot camps and workshops run by Outset (https://www.outset.org/plymouth/) on how to set up and run a small business and I’ve finally - after much prevarication - added my shop to my website, although now of course I’ll have to get up to speed on all the social media networks:)
June 2022
The advent of summer, visiting exhibitions and making new work
The advent of summer, and we’ve certainly enjoyed sitting under the trees in Central Park watching the wind blow the grasses and cow parsley. I don’t know why I’m so attracted to the shapes of cow parsley but maybe it’s because to me they represent ‘summer’. I’m currently trying to find ways of turning my sketches and drawings into prints; I’m happy with the drawings but I want to simplify them right down before printing them. I have pressed and dried some grasses and cow parsley in case I decide to make a collagraph series.
I’m on the last leg of the course taught by Liz Hough on ways to make your work more abstract and the latest part has been turning our work into collages; I wasn’t particularly pleased with mine - too fussy - but turned the motifs I’d made into lino shapes and made several prints from these and added the shapes to tiny square prints to make them 3D. I simplified the drawings I’d made into thumbnails and will screen print some of these at some point. I’ve also been collaborating with one of my friends from the MA, Sue Lewry, on screen printing with tusches which is a fairly complex process but we’re testing it out with a view to making some larger ones that Sue will edition for me once we’ve cracked it. The book ‘Screenprinting - the complete water based solution’ by Robert Adam and Carol Robertson (published by Thames & Hudson 2003) was very helpful with its explanations of the steps and processes involved . I used one of the collages I’d made on Liz’s course for this and it seems to work well, I really like the painterly marks the tusche makes. Sue also recommended the Mellon lectures ‘Contact: Art and the Pull of Print’, a series of 6 lectures about printmaking given by Prof. Jennifer L. Roberts which I’ve found very interesting.
Since finishing the MA last year I’ve been trying out painting in acrylic and this has not been particularly successful. I don’t like the ‘bounce’ of canvas and the paintings I’ve made haven’t been the paintings that I’ve had in my head, so I thought what was needed was a course in composition and enrolled on an online course called ‘Confident Composition’ taught by Sally Hirst. I’m so pleased that I did and can see a way now to make my paintings look like I want them to. Sally is a mine of information and very generous with her knowledge and advice on painting, mixed media and printmaking which she shares on YouTube and her website. I’d been simplifying some black and white collages from one of my sketchbooks in order to screen print them and the work we’re doing with Sally on simplifying and arranging elements to make better work using black, white and grey has helped me already. I knew about the work of Eduardo Chillida from my MA days but Sally also discussed his work and I feel that everything is (slowly) coming together…
Over the last month I’ve visited four exhibitions in Plymouth:
Breaking the Mould - sculpture by women since 1945 - Plymouth University
that has sadly closed but you can still read all about it on the website. The sculptures were very diverse and often made from the most unexpected materials.
Exhibition by Richard Sunderland and work by ceramist Leigh Mason at Artmill Gallery, Peverell. Show ends Saturday 2nd July. I especially liked Richard’s friezes and his tiny abstract collages; well worth a visit if you’re in Plymouth.
BA PDP Degree show at Arts University, Plymouth
we went to the Private View at The Mirror gallery last Friday and enjoyed the variety and standard of work on show
18 Jun 2022 - 04 Sep 2022 The exhibition of paintings and drawings about aspects of George’s life is very moving and uplifting - I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t heard of him before visiting The Box but I’m a convert now and I’ve signed up for his artist’s talk this Friday - very exciting!
Spring into May
This month we’ve been to Exeter, enjoyed walking around the parks and I’ve been making books and eco-printing
So, here’s a round up of what I’ve been doing during the last month. I read a really excellent book by Austin Kleon called ‘Show Your Work’ that I discovered whilst reading Clayhill Arts’ newsletter - it’s a great little book packed with helpful advice for creatives trying to get going and I highly recommend it. One of the best quotes in it was from John Coltrane talking about why he keeps playing (and it isn’t just for the money): ‘I have to feel that I’m after something…It’s the striving, man, it’s that I want’
A friend took us to Moretonhampstead to see the Open Exhibition (see ‘Events’ page) and to check out my print but stupidly we didn’t think it through and went on a day when it was closed - note to self, always check the opening times…however all was not lost as we enjoyed exploring the town and had a lovely Italian meal at Berto’s pizzeria. We’ve given our car to Son No.3 in an effort to be green and to live within our means so we went on the train to Exeter for the day, to the excellent RAMM museum and art gallery. When I was a child we visited our grandparents in Huddersfield during the holidays and spent a lot of time at the Greenhead Park Museum, looking at all the stuffed birds and animals in glass cases and I just thought how much museums have come on since those days (early ‘60’s). I loved the bird room with the shadow prints behind the blinds and the sound of birdsong. Looking around the rooms I noticed some beautiful lace made in Devon over a hundred years ago and just as fresh today. Ray Balkwill was showing some of his assemblages and paintings in the cafe which were lovely.
Continuing our exploration of Plymouth on foot, we’ve discovered two tiny parks very near us - Thorn Park and Mutley Park, tiny green oases in the middle of the city. I’m really delighted with how many parks there are in Plymouth and now that some of them have wild and un-mown areas, even nicer to see so many wild flowers and weeds (I love weeds) growing up. We have a very tiny courtyard garden and are in the process of planting up tubs and pots and putting up trellis so that we can sit outside when it gets warmer. I enrolled on an evening course at the City of Plymouth college in ‘Creative Arts Textiles’ and walk there and back through the parks and cemeteries, especially enjoyable after a shower of rain when all the birds are singing. For the first two weeks we covered eco dyeing and indigo dyeing; botanical dyeing was a lot of fun and easy to do if you get some leaves and petals, paper and iron water. I made my prints into a simple book then sewed some sashiko patterns over the top.
I’m still following the excellent Liz Hough online course from St Ives School of Painting; this month I’ve been turning my black and white drawings into 3D constructions and then trying to make collages from these. I haven’t found the collages very easy to do - I think I tried too hard and should just have relaxed and gone with the process - but I loved making the 3D constructions and some small paintings from these, and made some stamps from my motifs to make collage paper. Finally, one of the many excellent pieces of advice in Austin Kleon’s book was ‘share your reading list and point to helpful reference materials’ so in the spirit of collaboration here’s what I have been reading this month and some useful links.
Reading:
Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art - Phaidon
Eco Colour: India Flint - Murdoch Books
Drawing the Line: the early work of Agnes Martin - Christina Rosenberger, University of California Press
Landscape and Power, ed WJT Mitchell - University of Chicago Press
The Book of Boro: Susan Briscoe, David and Charles
Slow Stitch: Claire Wellesley Smith, Batsford
Making Books: London Centre for Book Arts, Pavilion
Textile website: https://www.textileartist.org/
Supplier: https://www.georgeweil.com/
April 2022
April - Spring has sprung and we’ve been out and about enjoying Plymouth and the Rame Peninsula
Good news, bad news. (Aside from the ongoing global bad news.)
The good news is that the sun has mostly been shining and it has been lovely to see Central Park burst into life with the cherry trees and magnolias showing off their beautiful flowers, and the allotments are showing signs of life. This past month we’ve been to Bristol, to see the truly excellent Paula Rego exhibition at the Arnolfini gallery, what an amazing technical ability Rego has, well worth a visit, and then we popped in to one of our favourite old haunts, Zero Degrees for a mango beer in the sunshine. Now that we live in the centre of the city, we’ve got rid of the car in an effort to be green and to live within our budget, so that’s been passed onto son No.3. This means we now go everywhere by public transport and what an interesting experience that can be. On the way home from Bristol we - and the train - got caught in a wave at Teignmouth.
Still exploring our new surroundings, we walked to Firestone Bay and watched the boats in the Sound. Some old friends came to stay and took us to Cawsand and Kingsand via the Torpoint ferry; the Rame peninsula and Rame Head in particular is unspoilt and beautiful with staggering views down the coastline towards the Lizard. It was a top day out especially when we ended up in Roam, our very local independent craft brewery for a swift 2/3 before supper.
The bad news is that my Instagram has been hacked and taken over which was entirely my fault for clicking on a link from a friend (aka the hacker, as it turned out) and within 2 minutes my account had been completely taken over and despite my best efforts to get Instagram to help me to get it back under my control, it has gone. I can’t decide whether to get a new account or not; in the meantime I shall use this Blog.
In the studio, I’m working my way through an online course run by St Ives School of Painting with Liz Hough as the tutor; it’s a follow up online course to one she ran last year and we’re learning strategies to help us move our work towards the abstract. (This movement towards online courses must surely be one of the benefits of the pandemic, because it means anyone can attend without having the additional cost of travelling to and staying in St Ives, lovely though St.Ives is?) Anyway, this month we’ve been turning our black and white drawings into monoprints then into 3D models, which we then draw and make collages from. I have done a ton of drawings, monoprints and sketches, whilst my studio looks like a Blue Peter set after the kids have gone home. All of the processes Liz has shown us have been a lot of fun and I will definitely be using them in my practice going forward.
