RA Summer exhibition 2017: focus on marks

296 Leonard McComb

 Is it really 2 months   since I started this blog post?!  Searching for images among the  multitude of files on my computer I came across the 'RA' folder and got side tracked for a while.  It's useful however to see after a time period whether the things that initially attracted me about certain pieces of work   still hold and whether there's  new things to enjoy.

I had 2 visits to the Summer exhibition this year . Looking at the website in between made me realise I'd missed  some pieces  and I went back for  a closer look.   Besides subject matter ( seascapes , coastal features, boats ) it  was often the details that drew me in: the juxtaposition of colours; slight variations in surface; combinations of media ; textures. Most of all the marks, particularly in woodcuts  and drawings; text as marks; brushstrokes  and scraffito.

Well known artists and names new to me - one the joys of the Summer Exhibition    

307 (detail)

307 Suzy Fasht

63 Jeanette Hayes

217 J.F.K Turner

242 John Renshaw

573 Sara Dodd

613 Anna Gardiner

717 Nik Goss

(oil on herringbone fabric)

940 Christine Hardy

849 Neil Bousfield

895 Caroline Isgar

926 Wendy Robin

980 Hughie O'Donaghue RA

54 Terry Setch RA

199(detail)

199 Ashar

1029 Archie Franks

556 Celia Cook

786 Lucy Farley

67 (detil)

67 Deborah Westmancoat

90 (detail)

90Alison Wilding RA

95 (detail)

95 Mick Moon RA

114 Susan Absolon

178 Nik Pollard

187 Nik Pollard

194 Peter Matthews

286 Michelle Dow

518 (detail)

518 Stephen Cox RA

561(detail)

561 Jo Gorner

496(detail)

496 Rebecca Salter RA

593 Rebecca Salter RA

937 (detail)

937 Rebecca Salter RA

958 (detail)

958 Tom Cartmill

799 Martin Davidson

Shore Marks

 A difficult week coming to terms with the fact that  one month of my notice has gone already, increasingly anxious  about finishing off everything I need to in the remaining few weeks.  The annual Kew Carol Service  was a joy, especially singing  O Radiant Dawn, but underscored  with sadness, especially thinking about Nigel Veitch, our choir conductor to whom the service was dedicated .  I won't be part of it next year and it's proving  increasingly hard to  have to tell people that I'm leaving Kew and cope with their reactions and questions.
So I spent some time over the weekend absorbed in the solace of stitching, piecing together  one of my quilts for 'International Threads'  exhibition in Prague in April 2015.  
This  quilt is for the theme on 'Creating visual texture with repetition'.   I started out with a  kola shibori dyed  piece of  damask cloth bought from African Fabric Shop  and a piece of the same fabric that I'd put in the indigo vat. The repetition is from the lines, the  underlying patterns on the damask and from the accidental marks of indigo left on the original cloth  which I will emphasise  with  indigo stitch marks. I feel the need for some hand stitching at the moment to keep me anchored.