All change!

As you may have noticed, this site hasn't been updated for a while. I've been working on various aspects of my creative life, including a number of exhibitions, and I now have a new site which covers all of my creative threads - art, craft and writing. This blog is therefore closed, so please feel free to pop over to Wordpress.

The power of threes

Threes turn up everywhere - in folklore (maiden, mother, crone), time (past, present, future), mythology (the fates and many other 'trinities') and of course in art as triptychs. I started thinking about hydrology and the water cycle, and how mechanical this is in many ways, and this led me on to ideas about air, land and sea. However, I didn't want to separate these formally as a triptych, but fortunately I had three small canvases that needed to be re-used and they turned into Hydrology (Air, Land and Sea).

First step, a metallic respray and bolting the canvases together.

Step 2: start adding the mixed media/collage elements. Yes, it is a seahorse!

The most 'mechanical-industrial' of the panels - Air

Not well lit, but here's the final piece, the way I envisage it being hung.

Close-up of the Air panel.

A sense of perspextive

If you are a regular here, you'll know that my ethos is to recycle, reuse, upcycle etc materials whenever I can. So, when I had an offcut of perspex from an old bus-stop shelter, I had to find a use for it. I don't have the kit to melt it into interesting shapes, and that's not my thing anyhow, but I do have power tools. This and a love of nature inspired the following, entitled 'Hard Rain'...

'Hard Rain' raindrops and ripples captured in perspex form - land art of a sort...

Looking through the ripples. The scuff-marks are part of its previous life as a bus-shelter and shall remain, and I hope that wherever it finds a home, it'll be hung as a panel through which to view, well, whatever lies beyond...

A portrait of the artist as a young pond.

Being an entomologist in my other life, I can't help but feel that this could be an insect's-eye view of the world from the water of a pond in the rain. Or a frog's-eye if you're feeling amphibian. However you look at it, I hope you like it - next stop = framing.

Paper clowns and oily flowers

Years ago I saw my first ever cartoons - not animation, but the relatively simple paintings used as preparatory sketches for oil paintings or tapestries; these were by Goya and are in the Prado. Being self-taught, I learn about such things piecemeal - at galleries, in books, online - wherever - but they do prove inspiring even if filed away for later consideration. So, I had a big canvas and a picture in my head, and so I decided on an acrylic cartoon/sketch for a large-ish oil/collage . Here's what happened.

The cartoon for Human Jungle - there's no background but I've started added more textured, thicker paint over the flat acrylic layer e.g. bottom right.

Working on the central flower with oils - all the oil painting was done with a palette knife as I do enjoy a bit of impasto.

An early stage (detail from the bottom right corner)

A later stage - oil paints applied and gaps being filled, but still a way to go...

Most of the oil painting has been completed. Now, contrastingly monochrome images are selected from old art magazines, cut to shape and glued in place.

The final picture - the paper collage sections have been varnished and final oil details painted. In places the oils have been allowed to blend/smudge into the collage. Now to leave it to dry (which takes time for thick oils), somewhere that our cat can't get at it!