Traces, Places

 January 2017

After a lot of cogitating,  ' Traces,Places' is the theme I've chosen for CQ Journal Challenge  2017 , hopefully broad enough to encompass  interpretations of  my surroundings in scraps and old quilts. I have big plans ! and  intend to use these as samplers   and try-outs for larger pieces , partly working towards  Cwilt Cymru's next exhibition ( the theme being 'traces')   but also  entries for  other  competitions and exhibitions as well as building up a series of work  based on the breakwaters and sea defenses at Birchington.  

Postcard textile  sketches

  It always takes me a while after I've been doing  an art course  and been bombarded with ideas and techniques to see what sticks, to see what I can take and use in my own work. There was  a lot of useful stuff covered in 'Advanced Painting'  particularly in strategies for starting; choice of colour   and 'steal like an artist ' looking at others work , pinching ideas and making it your own .

Paul Nash

John Piper

 One of the lessons was on using Photoshop or similar, not only at the start  but to look at your own work differently ( eg  reviewing tone, increasing saturation or contrast) and try different scenarios out.  As I've been thinking for a while of using the back of an old red and white log cabin ( I love the holey 'marks'!) ,I'd already been playing with images  using  the 'conte' filter .  The images above are manipulated artwork of Paul Nash and John Piper  while the image below is one of my photos of Birchington
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And then manipulated  copies of my own work 'Bexhill Breakwaters'

 When CQ  Kent group came to visit ( there were 10 of us  packed in the lounge!) I gave a very quick demo of the acrylic  techniques I used ( summarised in a series of posts I did for 'And then we set it on fire... 'blog).  I'd forgotten  the delights of painting over old stitching samples ( below)  

So I'm currently  revising the methods I was using and working on some samples to  try painting on ( a lot of stitching from the back  of a gessoed section of quilt with Perle thread in the bobbin) . Watch this space!

Paul Nash at Tate Britain

 Another Friday, another exhibition, this time Paul Nash at Tate Britain . It was great to see so much of his work altogether  and see the progression of  ideas  along with repeated imagery. I'm so used to  paying homage to  favourite individual paintings , like the 'Winter Sea' (above)  I visit every time I'm in York and 'The Shore' (below)  in Leeds so it was interesting to see them in context.

The 'Dymchurch' painting drawings and prints  that informed my ' Bexhill Breakwaters' quilt continue to inspire

 It was great to see some of his lesser- known photographs - I've got a  large number of shots of breakwaters and sea defenses too!

 I'm not usually a big fan of  surreal works  but seeing how he used scaled up  objects that had meaning for him set against the landscape  has given me ideas of how I might  combine my ' small treasure' drawings  with seascapes

  I've seen this painting ' A nest of stones' recently at Margate  - it was good to see it  in different company. It features in the frontispiece of my favourite art book  ' The Experience of Landscape' . I've had  it for over 20 years but still find new things  to enjoy  among the combination of  artworks and poetry.   

My journey from the Tate to City lit by bus was fun , on the top deck of a double -decker going via the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square, some interesting details at roof level along the ministries on Whitehall .
In the  Advanced Painting class   we were looking at colour strategies - limited palette ( eg complimentaries, monochromatic, analagous )  and colour inventories.  Enough exercises to keep me happy for months, I love mixing paints.

 This Picasso ' 2 women sitting at  the bar' is  another one of my favourite paintings. , I love the shapes and colours. I once saw it in an exhibition  when I was abroad somewhere, paying a fortune for entry so I could spend 20 minutes absorbing it.

 Many in the class chose to carry out an inventory of a painting, placing squares of colour like  Paul Klee's paintings

 I chose instead to  try and mix the colours found in this photo of 2 boats

  The squares did remind me how useful the 'pixelate, mosaic' filter is in Photoshop as an aid to simplification and identifying the colours

And while I was in Photoshop, I had a go at combining the stack of limpets  collected at Margate  overlaid on the  canvas I painted in Weymouth which I'm thinking of using as the basis for further experiments. Definite possibilities