Of workshops, balloons and pushy fish

Feeling it

Inspired by the enthusiasm and work of Corina Stupu Thomas, I tried to create an abstract to reflect how I was feeling. I had a large canvas that was just crying out to be repainted (it had been used as several different posters in it's life).

Out came the vibrant pink, the glue, the strips of fabric. I splattered paint, left the wet canvas in the rain, put light and depth in to reflect my mood then reality got in the way and I had to leave it for a few days.

 I came back, in a different mood, and all the colours changed - I went primary and lots of black crept in (probably not a good day!) so I went of an a huff and ignored it for a few days more until, in a lighter mood I went in with the white acrylic ink and changed most of the black to white so there was a glow round everything.

But still something wasn't right. It had gradually become an underwater scene, wreckage perhaps, but as I knocked back the primary colours which were all fighting eachother, it looked unfinished. It remained so for a week then I had the urge to do another fish painting - there was the possibility of putting work into the window of the local aquarium shop for an art trail - so went into the studio in search of paper and the next thing I knew I had painted a fish onto my abstract and it came to life as a painting. More fish, a quick wash all over of green and it was complete.


I was so pleased that this had suddenly come together after weeks of struggling that I put the photo on Facebook which lead to it being sold the next day. Cool.

Pushing Pastels


Here I was experimenting with oil pastels. I used them many many years ago (honestly, I think I was about 19) to paint a picture of waterlilies which worked really well, lots of contrast, lovely shiny leaves but since then have only ever used them at kids classes for resist techniques (oil and water not mixing).

 I ran a workshop at the Arlington Arts Group one evening on working large using paint and pastel and one person bought oil pastels, not chalk and was finding them frustrating as they didn't blend like the chalk pastels. I remembered that I used them very thick and 'pushed' the colours together to blend them, scratching off areas and getting terribly grubby.


So, I had another go. the sun was shining and I dragged my easel down the garden to the pond area where there's a rustic pergola over one of the paths which casts great shadows. I'm not so keen on this one yet - it's lost a lot of the vibrant colour of the sunlight on the vine leaves, that beautiful citrus green, as I've overworked it so I may try some light alkyd oil over the top, but the sunlight on the path is just what I wanted. I primed a piece of mountcard with black gesso, accidentally stuck some newspaper to it so carried on and added a load more strips of newspaper to the bottom half to add some texture and primed black over it. That texture was perfect for the path.

TUTORING

 These are some pictures of my Summer class students working in the studio/garage/barn/workshop. Unusual still life in chalk pastel, 'breaking the rules', and textured seascapes using polyfilla / texture paste and acrylics.

Some of the other classes included pencil details of eyes, hands and feet and black and white designs inspired by the Vorticists.

I enjoy these classes immensely and get a lot out of the research and preparation beforehand, plus I get inspired by the way other people work and always have the urge to be creative at the end of the class - sadly there's always something else to do at that point so I must run some morning classes and keep the afternoons clear for my own painting time!

My final class is on Wednesday, painting in the garden, but with the weather forecast I'm not sure that's going to be going ahead. After that, it's demonstrations and workshops to art groups (loads of those lined up) and the new Hailsham Art Group, where I'll be doing quick demos and tutoring twice a week if anybody actually comes along - we shall see, it's worth a try.


FESTIVAL STUFF

The Hailsham Arts Festival is fast approaching and everything had gone terribly quiet once the programme had gone to print so I started pushing it on Facebook, twitter, updated the website with all of the individual events and applied to put up the banners. Screech to a halt here - applying to put a banner up over a road requires £10,000,000 public liability insurance and the fixing points need to have an annual test certificate. With Gallery North's insurance only covering £2000,000 and my £5000,000 cover not actually covering a  banner because it's too high a risk (! what?) it was looking impossible. But Guy to the rescue (I believe he's connected to the Hailsham Bonfire society) , who puts banners up for the Town council and has his own PL insurance, does the fixing points testing and will apply for the licence and put the banner up for us! Result.

So, publicity can be hard to come by but Jenny, Festival Director, managed to get a press release into the local paper which got a lovely large piece with a photo on page 5. to keep the momentum and remind folk it's coming up, I suggested a press launch of the Festival programme. We had this yesterday and had the photographer (Stephen Curtis, lovely chap, knows everyone, is related to me and took our wedding photos) come along at 12 so we should have a picture in next week's paper, and then quite a few people came in the evening to pick up copies of the programme and meet eachother - not as many as I had hoped and only a couple of the committee, but sufficient numbers to make it worth doing. Julian Sutherland Beatson gave us a short talk about how to make the most of the Open Studios, based on his 5 years experience of the Eastbourne Festival,  which was very interesting and I'll write notes on the festival page. Balloons are key to success.

Sam Elsby from Hailsham Theatres was there and several members of the Ropemaker Theatre Company so I chatted about the Dicker Players which has whetted my appetite for our next rehearsal (I use the term advisedly) on Monday night. I do love doing our annual Cabaret - I updated the Dicker Players blog page with photos last night and you can see how much fun we have. Amateur and proud of it!

Not as old as I feel - and finally, I realised yesterday that I'm not as close to 50 as I thought I was. Sometimes being forgetful and bad at maths can have its advantages. Maybe my usual birthday 'blues' won't hit quite so bad this year!