Saturday 7th December 2013

Enjoyed working with Selena and the children who attend her Saturday art club at Letchworth Arts Centre this morning.  We had a look at my face pictures in the Foyer gallery and then we created faces first on post it notes and then on canvas squares.  The children pushed the boundaries in surprising and delightful directions, including faces of animals, sleeping faces and faces growing over increasing numbers of post it notes.  They enjoyed using acrylic paints and all produced beautiful work.

 

 

 

 
 



Also today I attended a talk by Anita Klein, organised by the Eames Fine Art Gallery.   It was thought provoking listening to Anita explain her views about reclaiming the notion that 'beautiful' and 'decorative' are essential components of 'good' art.

She has very strong feelings about conceptual art and believes that it should not be called visual art.  I don't exactly agree as I love some 'beautiful' art and some 'conceptual' art.  I love pushing aside boundaries between concepts and (as in education) I think the best art speaks to our emotions, our soul and our intellect.

However,  I love her work and was fascinated by what she had to say.  Mainly I think her frustration is the dismissal by major art institutions and critics of work that is seen as 'decorative' in favour of work that is trying to be clever and obtuse.

(As usual I find myself believing two diametrically opposed things at the same time.)

When I finally got home this evening I found this nice blog post by Beatriz Acevedo about my show in the Foyer Gallery at Letchworth Arts Centre.  Thank you so much Beatriz - I'm delighted that you enjoyed the show.

Friday 6th December 2014

Pleased to have my work on show in the Foyer Gallery at Letchworth Arts Centre this month.  As well as prints of the face pictures, I've been making handmade books of faces: here's a photo of some of them. They are an edition of 45, all unique with each face appearing in only three books.  The images are printed on archive paper with archive inks and the backing is made of silk.

I'm also selling Christmas cards, including this one:

Sunday 1st December 2013

I've been at Fenners today getting my pictures ready to hang in the Foyer Gallery at Letchworth Arts Centre.

Here are pictures of the four big grids - each face has been reduced to 7cm square from about 23cm square.  I'm completing a fifth grid (of 75 faces) throughout December.  Will add the faces below as I complete them. (Finished the faces on the 31st Jan 2013 and added them below on the 5th Jan 2013.)

Saturday 30th November 2013

I'll be showing some of my recent work in the Foyer Gallery at Letchworth Arts Centre in December.  Here's a bit about it.  (And here's a photograph of some of the original face pictures with beautiful god daughter Miriam.)

_{"Following a sequential project in 2012 for which I made a book for every day of the year,  I decided to make a picture of a face for every day of 2013.  I started with no rules except that there would be a face for every day of the year.  Sometimes I make two or three in one day, sometimes none.  They are numbered but not dated.  I have 75 more to make by the 31st December and I will be adding them here as I make them.  Eventually they too will be photographed, reduced in size and displayed in the last of the five frames exhibited here.}

_{When drawing the faces, I try to allow myself the freedom to draw like a child, without over considering what the drawing is meant to portray.  After I have drawn them I put them up on my studio walls.  As with the books that I made last year, the faces I make respond to the faces I have made before.  There are some faces that I notice keep recurring.  Some of them I recognize as people who have been important in my life.  Some are drawings from life or photographs, often of my daughters.  Others are simply created as I go along, starting with an eye and seeing what happens.}

_{Amongst other things the faces allow me to explore ‘girlhood’, celebrate it, and acknowledge its loss as part of my every day life.  My youngest daughter is grown up; drawing the faces helps me to acknowledge the part of me that misses having a ‘little girl’ to be a mother to and the part of me that doesn’t know quite when it happened that I stopped having the open, potent, faithful belief in myself as having the possibility to live the life of any number of young heroines from fairy tales, novels, films and magazines.}

_{Inspired by a quilt that was made by my great great great great grandmother, Anna Margaretta Brereton, which I saw for the first time this year, I decided to reproduce the faces in  patchwork grids for the purpose of this exhibition.}

_{I find that the simple rule of making something for every day releases me to work in an exploratory way whilst keeping one thread of certainty running through."}

Monday 30th September 2013

Magnificent Creatures at Standalone Farm

Enjoying working with Beth McDougall of the Heritage Foundation and Letchworth families at Standalone Farm.   Here's a link to Beth's nice blog about the project.

And a photo from our first session:

We have three more Wednesday early evening sessions to go - all ages welcome with accompanying adult. If you'd like to join us please contact Beth McDougall for details: beth.mcdougall@letchworth.com

24th september 2013

Been interested for a while in the idea of an immersive, walk in, book so was pleased to get a chance to visit ‘Memory Palace’ at the V&A.  It was a good show – with some great artwork by a diverse mix of artists, illustrators and designers. who each ‘illustrated’ a passage from a new story by  Hari Kunzru. The story was clear and simple – post digital world/illegal to remember/perpetrator creates an imaginary memory palace in prison.     Felt more like a well-curated show on a theme than an immersive ‘book’ or ‘story’ experience but I enjoyed it and felt I was in the hands of (very separate) experts.  I liked the interactive memory bank where people can add their own picture and word memories (although found it frustrating to use and wonder why the drawing tool couldn’t be better).

One day I would like to see an exhibition of a genuinely collaborative story writing structure where the writer worked with the artists, allowing the different media to generate the story. 

Loved the beautiful drawings by Alexis Deacon. 

Here is a link to some of the illustrators discussing the process.

5th September, 2013

Also, many Digswell Arts Trust fellows (including me) are taking part in the Hertfordshire Open Studios scheme this year.  Here is a poster with a bit of information.  (Fenners is open this coming weekend and next weekend - I'll be there on Saturday and Sunday this week and on Sunday next week.)

Thursday 5th September 2013

I'm delighted to be involved with this art project for families in September.  We'll be using the outdoor space at Standalone Farm in Letchworth, exploring drawing, painting, sculpture in response to the wonderful animals and environment.

Monday 24th June 2013

The Fenners show, Timeline, and the workshops are finished and all went very well.  Excited that Fenners has been inviting people in to see the exhibition and to work with us.  It has been wonderful collaborating with other artists and working with schools and families and I am excited about doing more of that.  But also pleased to have a break and concentrate on my own art work again for a bit.

Tired but I've found out how to put three pictures next to each other on here so feeling quite pleased about that.  These are from a book idea I am working on.

Tuesday 28th May 2013

Excited about our Fenners show and workshops happening in June as part of the Letchworth Festival.

Sunday 5th May, 2013

Strange experience today.  Found myself at the Forum in Norwich a day late for the artist's book fair 'turn the page'.  Very disappointed.  When I had recovered my equilibrium I noticed that the library was open and had a large children's section.

So I spent the afternoon happily perusing children's picture books.

My favourites were both by Helen Stephens: 'Fleabag' and 'How to Hide a Lion'.

Both beautiful, warm, happy stories with delicious illustrations.

While I am on the subject of 'things I love', I saw a great exhibition at The Wellcome Collection recently: 'Souzou - Outsider Art From Japan'.  Here's a short video about it.  I found it very inspiring and moving, especially watching videos of the artists at work. 

Also had a brief look at '1000 Years of the Art of Japanese Books' at the Brunei Gallery and have promised myself I'll go back for another look as I didn't have time to do it justice.  Here is a link to the information. 

8th April 2013

Been adjusting my website and looking through photographs of recent drawings.  I found these which were part of a book I made when we were in France in the summer, staying near Duras:

17th March 2013

I've finished getting work ready for Bologna Children's Book Fair - and it is out of my hands and on its way with the rest of the work for the Cambridge School of Art stand.  Looking forward to going to the  Fair next week - it'll be my first time and I think I will enjoy it enormously.

I am now giving some attention to the 366 little books that I made last year.  Have been thinking about how I am going to show them at the Fenners groups show in June.  Here are some of them:

14th March 2013

Have been very busy recently preparing drawings and dummy books for Bologna Children's Book Fair.  Excited to be going for the first time this year.  And pleased that I will have work on show on the Cambridge School of Art stand.  Here's an image from my book about two sisters, "My Sister Likes".

This week I was supposed to be going to Paris for a couple of days with my husband, but because of heavy snow in Northern France all Eurostar trains were cancelled so we found ourselves stranded in London and decided to make the most of it. Yesterday we went to  “Lichenstein: A Retrospective” at Tate Modern. Fascinating to see Roy Lichenstein’s paintings in the flesh. I had thought of them as conceptual works, making a point about comic books and mass-produced images.  So it was a delightful surprise to meet the real paintings. I hadn’t appreciated that these works are not exactly copies, parodies or celebrations: the best ones seem more like translations, with the paint being an important part of the work, rather than just a means of execution.  Personal favourites were the early comic book works, the seascapes - some of these used layers of stencilled dots in different colours creating star patterns in the spaces between them, and the mirror room - Briget Riley like explorations creating the illusion of reflected light with the simplest of changing dots and the odd curved line.

Also saw some modern African textiles at the British Museum.  Although the many dotted areas in these stunning prints are made with stamps they leave you with the same impression as the stencilled dots in Lichenstein’s paintings: in both, the groups of dots have been created by hand in a careful, watchful process.

Highlight of yesterday was Rosemarie Trockel's show at the Serpentine, very inspiring, exciting work.  Also saw the film Lore which I loved.

13th January 2013

Saw the exhibition Film in Space today. Another excellent show at Camden Arts Centre. This time about the moving image, or more specifically about exporing the tactile and experimental possibilities of analogue film. Curated by artist/film maker Guy Sherwin, the show draws from 'expanded cinema' work made in the 70s and recent work, some of which also includes digital media. There is a lot to digest and it is not possible to do it at one sitting as some of the exhibits will have changed three times by the time the show finishes at the end of February.

Was interesting to see work by artists like Annabel Nicolson, steeped in the hand-made innovative performance aspects of experimental film from the 70s, rubbing shoulders with current work by artists like Simon Payne who's site specific piece projected exactly proportioned coloured light onto the window panes in a window alcove.

My favourite room (gallery 3) showed modern films, concerned with light, colour, shape and movement, including a new work by Guy Sherwin: a small painting of simple rectangular shapes that continuously change when coloured light is projected on to the canvas, Emma Hart's piece for which light is projected through an automatic venetian blind creating shadows and reflections on the adjacent wall and Simon Payne's work, mentioned above and shown below.

Mariko Mori

Enjoyed the Mariko Mori exhibition at the Royal Academy in their 'new space for art and architecture' in Burlington Gardens.  It is full of optimism and embraces simplicity, clarity and connections.

It occurred to me as we walked through the familiar surroundings of what used to be the British Museum's Museum of Mankind, that I had not been there since I saw the 'Skeleton at the Feast' exhibition, about the Mexican Day of the Dead, in 1992. The building has not changed at all (although I understand that it is being refurbished and overhauled in a couple of years time).

This is the first paying exhibition based on the work of a female artist that the Royal Academy has staged since the Tamara Lempika exhibition of 2004. This link will take you to a list of past RA exhibitions: women's art work has usually been shown in the free areas like the cafe gallery and the friends' rooms.  This omission has bothered me for some time (not that I am suggesting there is anything wrong with viewing great art work free of charge).  Perhaps this excellent exhibition marks the beginning of a more balanced view from the Royal Academy.  (Disappointed there wasn't a catalogue for the exhibition though - although I was offered a very big book about women artists!)

6th January 2013

Loved Christmas but it is great to be back in my studio again.  I have finished my book project and  have 366 little books waiting politely for me to animate them; we need a rest from each other (the books and I) and I am delighted to be taking some time to make some paintings on canvas.  I am making paintings based on the wonder tale illustrations I made at the end of my MA.  

Here is one of my recent paintings. It is from the story 'Bearskin', a fairytale attributed to Henriette-Julie de Murat.  In the picture a princess is dressing in bearskins to escape from her rhinoceros husband.

I am pleased that I'll be going to Bologna Children's Book Fair in March and some of my work will be on show on the Cambridge School of Art stand.  I'm working very hard in the evenings to put work together for this.

Also excited about the teaching projects I am planning for later in the year, some with Rhapsode and some with other Fenners artists.