New paintings and regular art updates.
I’m painting tiny pictures, flowers, a cherry, vases, lots of ideas. I didn’t realise how much my shaking arm would affect me. I usually use an easle these days but you have to hold the tiny canvases. I want to do quite a few little paintings, but they have to be of good quality. Wish me luck..
What are you good at?
Paintings on display yesterday.
If I had to say what I was good at number one would be painting and art. Fourth years ago I went to college to do Fine Art, then I recently completed a course in illustration.
Art makes me happy. I love to paint acrylics on canvas and also watercolours. To me art is manipulating liquids or solids on a flat or shaped surfaces. I am good at using paint, pastels, ink, wax, pencils, felt pens. I also enjoy creating images digitally. I’m lucky to have good hand eye coordination. So I can copy most things, I’m also fairly good at creating abstract images. I am very lucky to have art training. There are lots of skills that I have been privileged to learn.
Whatever I do I will always create art. It is part of my DNA I think!
There is free entry to the Orme Art Group Exhibition. It’s on tomorrow at the Whitfield centre on Whitfield Avenue in Newcastle under Lyme. 11am till 4pm. The bottom photo is my table of small paintings. And the photo above it shows two boards with some of my larger paintings exhibited at the same time. I have finished five little paintings today, adding extra colour to one, a cat to another, and generally tidying them up. Then I put the paintings up on the boards, people seemed to like them. X
Two years ago I painted the mona lisa on zoom for a charity event, I did it over just a few hours. Other people did performances, I did this! Madness! Thank you Facebook for the memory.
It was actually sold off to raise money at the end of the event. It’s acrylic on canvas, and was a real challenge!
My legacy is my art. I have painted for years. I hope that someone wants them when I’ve gone.
I was involved in painting several murals over my time as an artist, but sadly most of them have been destroyed in one way or another. I painted a mural in the stairwell of the Unemployment action centre in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent just after I finished college. Then we found the building was going to be demolished. So myself and a friend got permission to go in and take photos. Unfortunately the photographs came back blank. The film had not been attached to the spool and was not exposed!
Then I painted some murals with a council art group. Over a few weeks we worked on a school canteen (alien/ sci-fi landscape) a ward at a hospital (images of Stoke-on-Trent to aid elderly patients memories), and a memorial for the 1914 to 18 war. All of these were demolished.
Finally I did twelve murals at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. This took me the good part of two years on and off. The painting above was a mural I did of the Burslem riot of 1842? I researched it and a lot of the characters were based on local Burlem residents and people who worked at or frequented the Leopard. All of the murals were destroyed in a fire that burnt down the hotel.
I have also painted scenery for the local pantomime and Mystery plays, but I don’t know what has happened to them.
What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
So if this isn’t my legacy what is? All the paintings and artwork I have created over the years since I was a child. Not all of them still exist. Art turns out to be quite ephemeral in some ways. But I’ve sold enough that, if no one wants the ones I still have, the rest have gone to new owners. Even if they were to appear in charity shops, I hope that some do find good homes.
Acrylic on canvas painting, work in progress. Of trees and rocks or stones. But I don’t remember what I was doing with it. I found it in the summerhouse while I was helping clear it up. I must have started it sometime last year. Perhaps in the winter. I’ll have to make a story up? Maybe it was too cold in there and the water froze, or the weather changed and continuous rain put me off. I’m going to get my brushes out and try and finish it off….
For the second time in a few months we are holding an exhibition at the Whitfield centre in Newcastle under Lyme.
The Group Exhibition is on in three weeks. If you are around come along and see some lovely artists and their work.
I will be doing some painting for another craft fair the week after. I hope to be doing small paintings of things like bees and flowers. I generally find images I’m interested in and work from them off my phone photo gallery.
When do you feel most productive?
Something stirs inside me about a fortnight before I have an exhibition of my art (it doesn’t happen very often). I’ve probably had seven or eight solo exhibitions in my life and some group ones.
Suddenly I get the urge to create and I can produce several paintings in a very short time. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, I become very concentrated on what I want to produce. It’s like time changes and I can be working till 3 or 4 in the morning without realising how time is flying (is this flow?). At other times I feel less able to create, the switch hasn’t tripped inside my mind I guess.
Productivity has to have a reason. I need to be motivated to get work done. Every day I do a little bit of art, so over the years I must have been very productive, but now with my health I am slowing down. Something I could do quickly takes more time. I feel that, it makes me sad and annoyed with myself. I really want to turn the clock back a few years, but I guess that’s not going to happen, so I’ll keep trying to carry on. I use different media and have recently tried charcoal and pastels as well as my usual acrylic paint on canvas.
Poppies everywhere on these two summery paintings. I took them over to Etruria last week so they should be on display at the Etruria Industrial museum today (Friday). The left hand one was based on the wildflowers on display at Trentham Gardens, the one on the right is emulating a tile pattern you would get on the side of a Victorian fireplace. Both were previously displayed at the Arts and Minds gallery at Middleport. It’s good to have a couple of venues to show my work at. I just need then to go to good homes now. X
Eight years ago I painted this. I based it on a broken terracotta wall plaque that I’d had on the wall outside but I think the frost split it. It sort of reminds me of the green man theme and I think I actually bought it in a green man shop in Pickering in Yorkshire….. It was an acrylic on canvas and I guess I must have sold it as I haven’t seen it for years? You can get inspiration from all sorts of places if you look.
Mallaband-Brown