New paintings and regular art updates.
Not right yet, eyes too close together, my nose is too long. But it’s getting there slowly. I need to try and make the eyes slightly smaller too. I tend to paint self portraits straight on although I might try and do a three quarter profile one instead as it can be more dynamic. This took about an hour and a half. In acrylic on canvas.
I only had an hour at art group today so I messed about and came up with this. It’s a semi abstract painting of a horse/zebra. I was concentrating on a limited pallette, green, burnt umber, a lighter brown, silver and white. First I painted the horse and highlighted it in green, then I added the gnarly tree. Finally I added textures, including the striped zebra idea. I think it has a vague medieval feeling. I’m calling it finished. Acrylic on canvas.
About three months ago? I started this, but then winter arrived and I stopped painting. My eyesight has got worse, I’ve found myself cleaning my glasses and realised it was my eyeballs that need “cleaning”, my cataracts are getting worse, extending into my central vision. It’s like a vaseline smeared camera lens that they use to make scenes in films look more romantic or nostalgic. In my case it’s like looking through mist. And it’s bloody annoying! Luckily I’m having my eyes checked out to have a cataract operation. Hopefully I will be able to paint again soon.
I think a lot about life and death these days. If I don’t hear from people I worry about them. This morning my cat was so fast asleep he was barely breathing. I didn’t want to disturb him, but he is getting old so I gently blew on his ear. It twitched and I was overjoyed. He was fine and woke a few minutes later.
My sister says she might come and live with me if my health gets worse. But somehow I want to reject that. I’m not ready for a last chapter of my book. There has been too much loss lately. I just want that to stop. To enjoy life for a change. Slough off my sorrows and come back fighting. I can’t keep my sadness and worry going, it’s too exhausting. I know I need to “memento mori”, a Latin phrase, which translates to “remember that you must die” in English. It’s a reminder of mortality and the fleeting nature of life. The phrase can be used for a work of art. I think that was what my little painting was about.
Arthur was one of my tutors at college. He went to Burslem School of Art to train in painting. I did this portrait mural of him and one of his paintings at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem in the back room. I think that was over ten years ago now. Unfortunately it was lost in the fire in 2022.
It’s emulsion paint, painted directly onto the wall, so when people ask me if the paintings were rescued I have to tell them no.
Acrylic on canvas I painted today. I wanted to paint a bold abstract which doesn’t have a name and I spoke to a fellow artist to ask what she thought. I almost called it Migraine!
She put her art therapy head on and felt it could represent emotions wanting to escape, perhaps bottled up anger. Certainly it looks a bit like a Catherine wheel. I think the outer part looks like flames. It’s not calm. It’s expressive, but also chaotic. Felt good to paint it. X
Street art in Newcastle under Lyme yesterday. Someone called Ian Mood has painted on a metal cabinet with images of miners. They were working up to about 40 years ago when the Coal industry of the country was dismantled and destroyed by Margaret Thatcher who was the Prime Minister of the time. There is still a lot of dismay at what she did. Life is crazy sometimes.
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I must have been about five when I realised I wanted to do art. I would make patterns on graph paper, draw and doodle and sketch. I know my mother started to collect some of my drawings. As I got older I put them on my walls. I even strung them across my bedroom held on by pegs because I didn’t have enough wall space.
When I was in my teens one of my paintings was sent to our twin town in Germany to be exhibited. My headmistress was given a drawing I did of my fellow pupils as a leaving present and I knew I wanted to be an artist as I told my careers teacher, not a nurse as she tried to persuade me. On to Art school to do a degree, and even 40 years later an MA in illustration. Now. I’m struggling. But iooking at different methods and skills. I’m not giving up!
It’s a wire cat my friend made, she’s done fairys and birds and squirrels. But now she’s gone onto making cats. I really like this, it’s about 12 inches tall and 9 inches wide. I’ve got it on my windowsill along with a collection of ornaments and a couple of plants (which I keep forgetting to water). I think its well modelled and quite cute. She certainly put a lot of work into it.
It’s hard to get a good photo when the surface of the underlying scraped board is so reflective. I’ve been playing with scraper board art, in the 1st and 2nd pictures the holographic surface changed colour due to the angle of the light hitting it. The image is based on a photo of my cat. The 3rd and 4th are a copper colour, the horse was made up from my imagination. The underlying board was metallic not holographic but still changed colour based on the angle of incidence of the light.
Mallaband-Brown