it's been about twenty five years since i decided i would be an artist... twenty five is a relevant number today, wikipedia helpfully defines it as 'the natural number following 24 and preceding 26'...in the year 2025 i hope i will still be working as an artist, living in a very big house, making very big work in a very big studio, in the country, but things may work out differently…i have been thinking alot about art, money and making it as an artist this week (future finances, and other ideas) because my current teaching contract ends in a couple of weeks… however, i will have some new work featured in two exhibitions in july.i have had four small paintings on canvas selected for a new art exhibition, Norfolk Contemporary Art 2010, at The Forum, Norwich. next up, there will be the exhibition Textures, Traces & Elements (with mixed media artist Hazel Bignell and ceramicist Carol Pask) at Beyond the Image Gallery, which is in the heart of the historic Thornham Estate (a fantastic setting - lots of trees, nature, walks)... but more on those two exhibition events nearer the time.sometimes i fancifully imagine as i write this that maybe some real people are reading this out of interest - apparently my blog spam widget has saved this blog from over 10,000 spam comments since November 2009 - but i find putting up images and text is (or will be) quite interesting for my good self to read again in the future.in the meantime, i need to have a bit of a 'studio clearance' of my recent experimental series of small abstracts on paper, to settle up so to speak... and instead focus on doing things closer to home - but it has been brilliant having some of these small works on paper fly across the pond...shown below are some of the paintings in the series of one hundred abstracts in a day (aka chromatids), all at twenty five (in uk pounds) - and they are about twenty five grams in weight (give or take).these small paintings work best when viewed as part of a series, and they explore my endless fascination with naturally weathered surfaces, but presented here in a more condensed, ordered and sequential way.please scroll down to view...you can also contact me at
...if you are interested in purchasing any of these paintings.
...random reminiscence: i once took a car for a joyride, a toy pedal car that is, a very smart, bright, shiny red car... i was probably about five or six years old and it was the summer holidays as i recall... the car was just parked up (abandoned at teatime) on a lawn outside a large grey-brick house, shaded by trees... i thought i'd take the little red car for a little spin up and down the pavement for a while (a totally irrational act of thrill-seeking) - i think i may even have driven it home, with an unlikely story about just 'finding it'... it was a very naughty thing to do but it was the most exhilarating drive for a girl; i never really liked ponies......a pony is a small horse (naturally), but it is also slang for £25, and also cockney-rhyming slang for crap (pony and trap)......
some large sculptures and a few small sketches
I took the opportunity this weekend to visit Snape Maltings by way of going to see a new exhibition by SOS artists Elizabeth James, Clare Rizzo, Carol Pask and Hilli Thompson in the Pond Gallery. It's a mixed show, with paintings, prints, ceramics and textiles. It's a good space to exhibit but the steep stairs make access difficult for the less physically able.Whilst there, I also had a stroll around the outdoor sculptures at Snape... these images were taken with a mobile phone, around the moment the breeze picked up and it began to rain...
Three 'figures' from The Family of Man by Barbara HepworthBarbara Hepworth was a friend of the Suffolk-born composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, Peter Pears. She also stayed in Happisburgh in Norfolk in the 1930's with the sculptor Henry Moore and the painter Ben Nicholson (who later became her second husband). These three totems were offered a gift to Britten (who established Snape Maltings as the main venue for the Aldeburgh Music Festival) in the 1970's. I am sure there used to be a Henry Moore sculpture sited at Snape too, perhaps on the vacant plinth across from the main music hall...There was a very good exhibition devoted to Hepworth, Moore and Nicholson and their connection to Norfolk at Norwich Castle in 2009. Both Hepworth and Moore were inspired by their beach finds at Happisburgh (pronounced haze-burrh), in the figurative forms of weathered flints, but more notably the sea-smoothed pebbles (which they collected and often carved). Hepworth, writing to Nicholson in 1931, tells of finding 'a most beautiful stone [...] I am so pleased with it I have packed it'; in 1937 Moore writes in The Listener: 'Pebbles show nature's working of stone. Some of the pebbles I pick up have holes right through them.' So there you have it, a shortcut key to British sculptural abstraction - truth to materials and derived from natural forms...
Migrant (2003) by Alison Wilding, located in a wide ditch before the expanse of the reed bedsAlison Wilding's installation 'Migrant' perhaps needs no further explanation (they are grounded and yet outcast), but I like how the two forms allude to hooded figures as much the steely vehicles in which they might secretly travel - and the surrounding vegetation will, over the course of the seasons, alternately reveal and then hide a sense of quiet movement in the landscape...
Perceval by Sarah Lucas (photographed looking east to accommodate the wider vista)'Perceval' is a life size replica of a Shire horse in painted bronze (one of a edition of five), pulling a cart containing two supersized concrete marrows (making a connection to Lucas's other work), a work that also replicates a familiar British, and now very kitsch, ornament. Perceval also makes an allusion to the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and so many other literary associations abound.Sarah Lucas is one of the original YBAs (and old friend of Tracey Emin), and is known for subversive (and often lewd) mixed media works that mock cultural, social and gender stereotypes. This work seems very polished in comparison (with some irony) for Lucas, who is known for combining low-tech, crude objects and materials in her smaller sculptures (tights, kapok, wire, plaster). This sculpture is undeniably Duchampian in its conceptual influences, elevating the commonplace 'trashy' object into a more sophisticated artform, alluding to the British preoccupation with issues of class, taste, sentimentality, nostalgia and our relationship to the (pastoral) landscape. I could also mention Constable, but Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst come to mind instead......I did some quick panoramic landscape sketches of the 'greening' Suffolk countryside this weekend ...Here are four of them (14cm x 40cm) in a very small sketchbook - and for some visual contrast, are shown with corresponding photographic snapshots of the same (or near as possible) 'street view' from Google Maps (I did not have a camera)...
[field, looking south west - graphite pencil on paper]
[same field, looking south - watercolour on paper]
[old airfield runway with rapeseed field and green wheat - watercolour and pencil on paper)
[road towards village with church and poplars - watercolour and graphite pencil on paper]These images are courtesy of Google Maps, cropped to correspond to the above landscape drawings...
This is not exactly an awe inspiring landscape to draw, but a sense of distance clears the mind - the clear horizons and expansive skies compensate in contemplative terms...
on breaking the mould
this is a papier maché decorative bowl - one of a series that i made as a supporting sideline to my artistic practice soon after graduation from art school.
[papier maché bowl, c.1993]my papier maché objects were influenced by things I saw in books, artefacts in local museums, and stories of Anglo-Saxon hoards such as Sutton Hoo... it seemed much more straightforward to develop, promote and market one's work in those days, with none of the 'issues' associated with art on the internet...i am revisiting some ideas and ways of working in 3d again, but differently... i do have, at least, a personal history to draw from....
[plaster cast moulds]here are some other experimental things in the working - inkjet transfers and monoprints, from my lichen photographs...
[lichen photographic image transfers]i like the subtle degradation of the images here, more authentic and textural than a glossy photograph...
[image transfer]which links back to the previous blog post on using digital images in artmaking.
[lichen on stonework - digital photograph]my digitally dissolved 'blind' landscape photographs also created some interesting effects as image transfers - resulting in quite delicately textured works on paper...
[inkjet monoprint transfer]strangely, what was once just a traditional landscape image of East Anglia has now evolved into what looks like mould spores on a damp wall... i am trying out some different substrates......I spent my amazon gift voucher on Richter's 'Cage' paintings book, having picked it up and put it down on two occasions at the Tate Modern. Storr's accompanying text is rich in description and poetic metaphor, putting into words the action of painting, but much of this text is aimed at the non-artist. Gerhard Richter's own words on the 'Cage' series are curiously absent, but this is more than made up in the many and generous photographic details of painting processes and surface textures...