New paintings and regular art updates.
Today was the last day of the biennial exhibition. We only managed to get to the one venue at All Saints church on Leek Road Stoke-on-Trent. The pottery and ceramics on display were remarkable. From abstract to classical, but all with a modern twist. I wish I’d managed to get round the other venues, but I didn’t feel up to it. Anyway I bumped into a couple of friends. I will probably post a few more photos later.
#bandofsketchers prompt for Thursday was Cutter. I hope this is a cutter? In April I did a tall masted ship drawing on the theme Voyage. A friend saw it and wants a painting of it. This is my work in progress that I thought fits the prompt cutter…acrylic on canvas.
The second, and most difficult, painting collaboration by Orme Art Group from this summers challenge.
It’s, amazing to have so many techniques and styles pulled together in this final image. Some parts line up better than others but it really shows the tenacity of the group with all the complicated figures and colourful background we tried to copy. I hope Renoir would not have been too disappointed!
Orme art summer challenge 2023. We drew and painted from two seperate pictures. This was the version of a Degas. Each member took a square then it was put back together with each person’s contribution.
Painting from eight years ago, it came up on my Facebook page. I don’t know if I’ve ever posted it here.
Autumn Woman
When the leaves fall
From under leaf litter
You will slowly crawl.
Gleaming colours
Red, gold, green,
Are soft or brittle
A seasonal scene.
Then mists and fruits
Make subtle colours
And Autumn woman
Finds her full power.
What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
I’m not a banker, politician, doctor, vet. I’ve done jobs that have lasted weeks, months or years, but none I would call a career. This is the Internet, so I’m not going into details. Why should I tell all and sundry? I did think of taking up a career, but it didnt work out (I failed the interview) I might be rich or at least well off. I didnt follow that path, so in ended up with a series of jobs.
But through it all I’ve been creative, I make art, it might not be the best, but I love painting and drawing, taking photos, making pottery, experimenting. Who needs a career if you have the freedom to be yourself?
Whatever you do, be open to chances, take care, I wish you luck
This weekend at Etruria Industrial museum, steaming the Princess engine. Pleased they’ve used my painting of it to publicise the event. (28 and 29 Oct 2023). I think the opening times are on their Facebook page.
The industrial museum includes Jessie Shirley’s bone and flint mill. The Princess engine is a beam engine that ran the belts to grind the flint in large floor pans in the adjoining building. It’s steam powered and runs by using a beam to rock up and down like a seesaw. This uses steam to push a valve down and then the vacuum created pulls it up again. I’m not an engineer, but you could come and see it running.
Etruria Industrial museum
Kilndown Close
Etruria, Stoke on Trent
Staffordshire.
(on the Trent and Mersey canal).
What have you been working on?
I am struggling to do things again. This incident with the theft from the garden has knocked me back. I’m jumpy and sent hubby out into the garden tonight to see if there was anyone about because I heard noises. It was only the neighbours thankfully.
I want to be doing art, drawing, experimenting, painting. But life keeps bashing me. I’m not happy to think I will never do things again. I think I can work my way through things, I’m just not sure.
Meanwhile I’m sitting watching TV, or listening to the radio. Hopes are low, but I still have them. So busy doing nothing as the song goes, but hopefully not for long.
Take an image, duplicate it, turn it until you are happy with it’s position. I used incollage app to create these. The original images can be a drawing, an image that has been digitally manipulated or just a photo of an object. Just experimenting and having fun.
Who are your favorite artists?
Renoir, Pissaro, Degas, Monet, Manet…. And many more artists. The beginning of a modern French movement, that started to move away from classical art towards a more emotional, abstracted style of art.
The French Impressionists held a ‘salon des refuses’ in 1863 of paintings that had been refused by the official Salon. It was organised because so many paintings had been refused and the Emperor Napoleon III arranged it.
Many of the upcoming French Impressionists were part of this exhibition.
My favourite artist is Monet, from his repetitive paintings of haystacks, to his paintings of the facade of Rouen Cathedral in the 1890s in different light conditions and colours fascinated me. Then his later huge paintings of waterlilies when he lived at Giverny. This was as he got older and his sight was affected by cataracts. I think I remember reading that he was one of the first people to have a cataract operation?
Of course the Impressionists were only the start of changing artistic styles. Post Impressionists, fauvists, expressionism, pointellism, then cubists and so many other schools of art.
Basically there are too many things to talk about. I have books about the Impressionists somewhere? I don’t know where.
Mallaband-Brown