New paintings and regular art updates.
A painting from five years ago. I do like painting birds, particularly owls. I made a few in pottery class at school, I just like the circles of feathers round their faces that help direct sound to their ears (I might be wrong?) and do they have one ear higher than the other for the same reason. I need to find out.
A mad idea, a curry dragon! I was just going to write about a nice curry we ate and I was looking for a photo but my finger slipped and I chose this photo instead. But a curry dragon, why not? There have been soup dragons that lived with the clangers that lived on a moon on TV in the sixties and seventies. Now I could imagine a hot fiery and spicy curry that could fly away and set fire to the table.
detail of a favourite painting. I did this forty years after painting the original. I can’t find the full photo. The hashtag #favourite was in a Facebook group I’m in. I loved the town landscape. I was living in a flat opposite a steep hill so I could see down into back gardens and see people gardening and putting washing out, also the architectural structure of the rooves. I was just starting my fine art course and thus took six weeks painting every day in situ. I remember being told off for taking so long over it, so I learnt to paint faster!
What to do in your open studio? Meet lots of people who want to ask questions. I got nervous seeing so many people so I decided to paint my hubby reading. It’s a vert small studio and as one lot of people left another came in. I tried speaking but it’s hard to know what people think and after avoiding people for a couple of years because of Covid I have become more socially inept. It’s just hard to know what to say. But anyway overall it was a positive feeling. I sold one minature painting and made the princely sum of £4!
I will be at studio 21 at Spode tomorrow for our annual Open Day. Come and see me painting in the studio or visit the makers market where I will have minature paintings for sale. Then during the day I will try to complete a new painting of a bottle oven (a pottery kiln).
It’s been two years since I’ve been there properly. My fear of Covid, then illness and bereavement have kept me out. But everyone was so nice today. I’ve entered some of my minature paintings for the craft Market. I thought people might use them as Christmas stocking fillers. There’s everything from a tiny giraffe with an abstract background to a small Jupiter with great red storm and a moon passing by. Maybe I will sell a few.
I’m going to go to Spode Open Day on Saturday. It’s part of being a studio member at the old Spode Factory in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent. I might be selling small paintings, but it’s been so long since I’ve been there that I have really got out of going in. With the pandemic and then illness and then a recent bereavement it’s been hard to pluck up courage to go in. My mind just got stuck in park (if that’s the phrase) and its been hard to get out of that feeling, but I think I’m slowly making progress. Anyway the painting is called Green Man, it’s a favourite subject of mine. Something serene and mystical about this mythical character (maybe not this particular one though).
This is another group collage that the Orme Art Group did during lock-down. We each did a part of this Picasso painting and then submitted them to one of the group to stitch them together. I can’t remember which bit was mine. It’s interesting because although we were copying from the original you can see different techniques for each artist and also different colours and tones. I really enjoyed doing these collaborations.
Spode studios are having an open day this Saturday so I hope to be there to show off some of my newest ideas and paintings. It’s sometimes quite cold though so I will have to dress warmly. This horse painting has a pot for the potteries hidden in it. I’m not sure if I will stay in my studio or set up a little market stall so I can try and sell a few things. I will have to decide.
An old drawing I did of the local church one Christmas. It’s coming up to that time if year to decide what paintings to do for Christmas. I don’t want to make them too twee. They have to be something someone would want to hang on a wall. I half want to paint little icon paintings, or maybe images taken from something like the book of Kells. It’s hard to decide, do Robins work? Or are they just things you find on a Christmas card that get brought out once a year? Who knows?
Another old painting. This was from about eleven years ago. The planet has only completed part of its orbit around the sun since I painted it. I don’t know why I paint astronomical objects, they are hard to do! Acrylic on canvas. This was my attempt at Jupiter. This banded gas giant is renowned for its great red spot (a storm that has been shrinking for a few centuries). I think painting planets is like knitting, trying to fit the right pattern in the right place. I also don’t think my paint is blended enough. I have lots of astronomical paintings, I need someone to be interested in them!
Mallaband-Brown