New paintings and regular art updates.
This is from about 20years ago. It’s me and my old cat. It’s an acrylic on canvas. One friend criticised me for being too splodgy. It’s called Familiar friends.
When you look back at any picture of yourself it can be shocking how much you have changed. The lines on your face increase. I’ve got many more blemishes now. If I take a selfie it tries to blur out the imperfections and I look like I’m standing in fog!
I love this painting. I had dark hair and I was slimmer!
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You know it’s cold when the ice that was put in the sink on Friday night is still frozen in the sink on Sunday.
This is what had happened at the “an, exhibition of Blue”, which I was helping invigilate yesterday.
The exhibition space is in part of the old Spode Factory which has been converted into artists studios. The building used to be full of pottery machinery and pottery kilns. I imagine they did not need much insulation in those days. Now, however, thin walls and single glazed windows together with thick concrete ceilings high up which allow all the heat to rise make for icebox conditions in the winter.
We also did not know where the switch was for the space heater that sits next to the lift. So guests and artists alike stood next to or inside the kitchen where a small electric fan heater was trying to defrost the ice in the sink! People tried to sit on the couches to keep their feet off the freezing concrete floors. I’d been there three hours before one of the other artists at Spode found the heater switch in a cupboard! I did feel foolish for not looking.
Even though it was cold we got a good turn out. The exhibition will be coming down soon but it may be possible to get one of the exhibitors to show you round if you are interested.
I did these cards about a year ago. I had taken photos in a friends house because she wanted some home made cards.
If you would like to do something similar all you need I’d a thin black ink pen and acrylic paints thinned down to watercolour consistency. They work as well as watercolours and it saves having to find them out from whatever cupboard I’ve got them in!
I basically drew outlines then filled them in with the paints.
I’ve only done a few more of these. Maybe I will paint more in future.
The Exhibition of Blue opened tonight at Spode Site at Eleanora Street in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent..
As you can see from the photos there was a great variety of work on the breif Blue. Everyone had to produce art in Blue with only the addition of white, black and grey.
There were glass and resin pieces, acrylic pours and paintings. Drawings and photos, installations with blue lighting and wall painting and fabrics. We were also entertained by an artist with a beautiful voice who sang the blues.
There were also blue cocktails for people who attended the exhibition. The only real downside was the temperature. The Spode studios are inside an old pottery building. The place was once filled with pottery kilns so it was not built with much insulation. It can sometimes be colder inside than it is outside. The exhibition continues till at least Sunday. It may continue next week but it has yet to be decided.
An Exhibition of Blue opens at 6pm tomorrow night. I know what I have painted but I can’t wait to see what others have done. I could have sneaked in to take a peek but I want to enjoy the suspense like waiting till Christmas afternoon before you open your presents or looking through an assorted box of chocolates looking for my favourite piece.
There are a lot of exhibitors ranging from glass and light installations to possibly found objects. I know someone has based their art on an old blue and white plate design (with a modern twist), I don’t know how my work will compare but it was a pleasure to work with the organiser to enter a painting to the exhibition.
The excitement is increased because I want to see how different people have interpreted the colour blue.
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Since I did so many posts about Blue I thought I would write a random poem about yellow. ….
Yellow bowl,
full of custard,
Bananas
Yellow bandana.
Rifle through my brain…
Yellow ochre,
yellow belly,
Lemon yellow.
Polka dot bikini.
Cadmium yellow..
Corn on the cob
Belishia beacon,
Beaches of golden yellow sand,
Yellow wands of willow,
Yellow cotton pillow
case…
Painted yellow face?
Hello yellow jello
no need to bellow…
Yellow….
I was going to include an American politician in this but thought better of it….
These are a couple of photos of when I painted a willow pattern plate painting. I did it because I had moved into my studio at spode and I had done a series of paintings of pottery.
I looked at various tiny images of the willow pattern pottery by various manufacturers and selected about 3 plates to do the design from. Sitting holding my phone in one hand with the canvas on a table easle is quite difficult, trying to look at photos about 2 inches Square. I made up the outer border mostly from my imagination.
More work. .. Coming back to finish tomorrow… Hopefully …. I need thinner lines I think…..
Sorry about the quality of the picture. But this was a painting I did a couple of years ago at the Orme Art group.
It was a still life set up by members of the group which we all worked on. Shadows were cast in two or three directions so it was a challenge to work out how to depict them.
Also the glass vase threw a coloured blue shadow with the ripples shimmering on the wall.
I’m not sure if I got the scale of each object right. The vase must have been really big or the teapot very small?
One problem with looking closely is that you can look at each object and not always the whole. That’d why it’s important to literally and metaphorically take a step back to check.
I’ve been doing some more work on this painting. I want to get it finished this week. It’s a painting of one of the poles of Jupiter. In the photo it has a bluish tinge but I’m trying to make it bluer as the exhibition title is “an Exhibition of Blue” on in Spode exhibition space at Acava Studios, Spode Site, Eleanor Street, Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent. From 2nd February 2019.
Mallaband-Brown