Wild Fire

I’ve put the Holmes Chapel Camera Club Annual Exhibition up in the local library this Monday. It contains a selection of prints from the members of the club, covering a range of styles. It was selected to show the diversity of styles that the members of our small village club have. I’m pleased to say that two of my images are included.

Steel and Glass

‘Wild Fire’ (left) is an image created from a small area of the back of a headstone in the Lake Ditsrict, while the other image, Steel and Glass (right), is a monochrome image of a (much larger!) piece of a modern building in Manchester.

The exhibition will remain in the Holmes Chapel Library Meeting Room until the 2nd August.

I have been working on getting together a decent amount of small affordable items to sell as I think they will be more appealing at this sort of event. I am currently working on 3 more magnetic shopping pads and a hardback note-book. I have ordered plenty of new cellophane bags in which to display and sell these and am waiting for their delivery.

These are the ones I have already created and I have since made a few more in a similar style. If I don’t sell them all at the weekend I will be putting them up on my Etsy shop and my personal website too.

Painted all over with a metallic blue acrylic paint, I then glued some metallic blue cord in a spiral shape and filled each segment with various beads and dots of acrylic white paint. It was only when I’d uploaded it and was varnishing it, however, that I noticed it bears a resemblance to a collaboration painting done by fellow RGC artists Kosana Marton and Andrea Farmer. I must have had the image of their painting in my sub-conscious mind for ages without realising it!

Here is my latest creation, “Mutable Cell I”. It is 7 x 5 inches.

I think it rather resembles “Sensuality” -which can be seen here on the RGC website. Although that was not my intention as I started creating this piece, it shows what an impact art has on you whether you are aware of it or not.

Remember Me

I’m currently concentrating on producing work for the Chelmsford Arts Trail 2010. The paintings shown here are all based on Essex rural and coastal scenes. Although I haven’t decided exactly which pieces I will exhibit yet (the Trail starts in September) I want to build up a collection of works to choose from when the time comes. I’m very much enjoying expanding on my floral themed landscape paintings and plan to create a few more incorporating wild flowers.
www.andreafarmer.co.uk
www.roguegenegallery.com

Watching the Tide

Wild Dunes

For my cup, I chose an African Drum as my model. It was difficult to work on something small and with such movement on the work surface. I used some modelling paste to create an extra rim at the bottom of the cup and make it look more like a carved wooden drum. The rest of it was painted in acrylic paints and the skin of the drum and handle are made from scraps of suede that I cut off a pair of boots I used to own!

I based the design on one of the many African hand-made bongo drums that I saw on my travels across Africa when I was younger – two of which I actually still have as mementos of my travels. The hardest part of re-creating the drum from a paper cup was getting the skin of the drum to look as though it was stretched tightly across the top of the cup! There was just not enough rigidity in the paper cup to actually stretch the suede across, so I just did the best I could.

I hope to visit the exhibition once it has started and get some photos of the rest of the exhibits – it will be really interesting to see what everyone else has created.

Prepared background for Amanda

I painted this using a plastic palette knife. I deliberately left a small area either side of the crimson red strip strip down the middle of the painting as bare canvas. I painted lamp black at the top and bottom edges of the canvas, then used a “shimmering red” interference acrylic medium, which gives different effects depending on how you use it. It has created a pinkish hue on the black areas, but I have a feeling it will change even more as Amanda creates the foreground layer. I am really looking forward to how she treats this one and wonder if she is wishing I’d done a more traditional landscape instead!

No doubt Amanda will report back when she has finished it. I am hoping Kos gets her background painting soon, too – I posted it yesterday so it shouldn’t take too long to get to her.

I love the freedom you get when working on a collaboration – not sure if I prefer painting the background or the foreground, but either way, it’s a really exciting way of creating something. You can see the rest of the Rogue Gene Collective’s Collaborative Artworks here and by browsing through the individual members’ galleries.

I was originally thinking about giving Amanda something that would tie in with her usual style, but decided to give her a bit of a challenge instead – it will more than likely end up being an abstract piece of art as far as I can tell.  Photo to follow next week!

Next collaboration back-ground is for Kos.