Painting time needed!

Have just added some more work on Red Bubble- mostly stuff from 2007. Realised I haven't done any paintings for a while (or nothing I like that much!) - busy making mosaics, re-modelling the garden, getting hitched, experimenting with mixed media stuff.... but my fingers are itchy... feel some painting time needed!

Mosaics at last

For years I have been saving broken crockery and having 'rescued' two wooden reels that have had electricity cable on them, and having our wedding as a deadline, I finally managed to do something with some of my hoard. These mosaic tables are the result. I'm really pleased! I added some plastic bottle tops, glass pebbles and broken tiles. The middles of the reels have rope wound round them, and the wood was painted with a blue paint for garden furniture, as they are for the garden. They looked great for our wedding parties!

Red Bubble

I recently started putting my work on Red Bubble. You can buy cards and prints of it from there, but also it's a community of artists who give feedback to each other. I haven't really got into that bit yet, as I'm a bit hesitant as I've only put three photos up so far, but my intentions are good....

This is one of the works - it's a favourite of mine - I was using a knife rather than a brush (or as well as) which is fun as you can get these repeated 'cuts' into the paint.

Glitter!

Have recently discovered glitter gel pens! I love glitter and shine. All my doodles will be glittery now!

As years go by....

How did it get to be 2 years since I last posted?! Think I must be losing time somewhere.... maybe I exist in another universe as well..... actually I live in many places in my head, with all the different fantasy series I read, some I probably spend almost as much time in as the "real" world. Kim Harrison with The Hollows, Kelly Armstrong and The Otherworld, Charlaine Harris with Sookie Stackhouse, Jim Butcher and The Dresden Files, and many others.... all with a strong enough sense of place and the world they exist in that I feel I could visit....

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?'