Sorting paintings for my exhibition

Nine months after the de-cluttering for the Open Studio event, my studio doesn't look too bad! (It maybe has been tidied again once or twice...) These photos show paintings I was preparing to put up in an exhibition - which went up today.... more photos to follow!

My Studio

My de-cluttered and re-organised studio. It feels so big now and it's such a pleasure to be in there. I've shown quite a few people up there today during the open studios event, I'm so glad I've got it looking really good!

Playing with Colour - Exhibition at Chesterfield Library December 2011

These show various views of the exhibition I had at Chesterfield Library, the work was well received in that I had lots of good comments and although I didn't make a direct sale from  here "Blue Curve 2" was bought by my friend Jenny as a result of my sending information out to friends about the exhibition. She looked at the work on Red Bubble as she couldn't get to the exhibition itself. 


It was good to be able to stand back and view the work from a distance - 10 foot is about as far as I can stand back in my house and some of my work looks really good from further away - you can see different things in it than from close up. (It's ok to say my own work looks good isn't it? After all I wouldn't paint it if I didn't like it!)

Blue Curve 2

Blue Curve 2

Blue Curve


"Blue Curve 2" I did after my last post ... so I did act on those itchy fingers! 


 "Blue Curve", which I have on my living room wall - is one of my favourites, it is often admired, so I thought I would use it as a starting place for another picture. I just had a good look at it and then went up to my studio and painted my version 2. A colour or combination of colours is often my starting point, blue being a favourite - in fact sometimes I have to work hard not to paint blue pictures all the time. Though I suppose if I did it would be fine anyway! I like this very much and have actually sold it! To a friend, but it is very exciting to sell a work! I struggle with the selling side - particulary as with friends I always want to give them away, but Jenny has insisted that she buy it - as encouragement to take my work seriously, which is  indeed marvellously encouraging. 


I find both of these paintings quite contemplative - almost meditative. Ripples or the surface of water is in some way the inspiration, but not in a straightforward naturalistic way but I have tried painting water and this resembles what I did then.

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.

Black and Gold

This shows two paintings more typical of my current work. The black and gold one (I don't always have titles for my work - although it will get confusing when I do another black and gold one!) is my most recently finished work - it had been very dark, and I knew it wasn't quite finished, and when I picked it up again I'd just bought some lovely gold paint.... it's currently one of my favourites.

Angel Wing

I took some of my paintings into the library I work at, for an Arts day we were having. It was interesting to be able to see my work from a distance and in a different environment. It felt good to exhibit if only for a day! I was also running a workshop on creating art from recycled materials.


This painting is called Angel Wing ( done in acrylic on canvas) most of my work is abstract but there a couple of unfinished works that are part of a series with Angel Wing, where the starting point was the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. I had done a series back in the 90s which also explored the elements, and having had a long break from painting it seemed good to go back to some paintings I had been very pleased with, and use them as a starting point. I will write more about this when I have some more images to show - the earlier work is quite different.