Bird Goddess Triptych 1987
Graves Art Gallery

I did these paintings in 1987.The three paintings are individually called: The Bird Goddess, She Re-emerges and the Goddess of Transformation.

I was very interested in using neolithic images as a starting point, particularly for developing positive images of women, particularly fat women. The source imagery came from one of Marija Gimbutas books; the bird goddess from a particular statue, She Re-emerges more generally from neolithic 'venus' figures (and my own body shape) and the Goddess of Transformation from the idea of a 'butterfly' goddess and it's representation as a labrys, a image taken up as a lesbian symbol in the 1970s.

The Triptych is displayed here at the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield as part of an exhibition by a women's art group called 'Women and Change'.

The paintings are on paper and are painted with household gloss paint - I used to beg the ends of tins from friends, which meant I could paint large works cheaply! I stopped using the paint as I became allergic, if not to the gloss paint itself, to the white spirit I used to clean brushes and myself - I'm a very messy painter!

Grapes

Dear Me .... I don't seem to be posting very regularly! I made a New Year's Resolution that I would post at least once a week . Hmm. I think that means I need to do 25 posts to catch up! I could cheat and make them all very short - like this one!

As this photo shows, I'm not very good at photographing my work - it shows rather a lot of my attic studio! This painting, done last year or possibly in 2007, gets called 'Grapes' ... as it looks like bunches of grapes! It wasn't originally intended to be grapes, just another abstract, playing with colour, expression of feeling etc, but when the grapes started appearing I thought 'why not?'

Dark Dancing

Dark Dancing

Another image 'painted' with ArtRage.It started as much lighter - swirls of metallic paint, (I just can't resist shinyness!) but having worked on it today, I'm obviously feeling darker, I needed to paint with black - but it became a dancing line - almost a figure.

New Year and New Toys to play with!

My partner Barbara has given me a 'Bamboo Fun' graphics tablet for Christmas - a big treat! I've been playing with it and this is my first 'painting' with it. It looks so like real paint! I couldn't resist having a metallic sheen to it all. A bit tacky really..... The software I'm using, that came as part of the package is called ArtRage2. It's pretty easy to use and I'm looking forward to exploring all the possibilities.