A Grand Night Out

Kathe
Image: Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), Self-portrait with hand against cheek (before July 1906) © The Trustees of the British Museum

So this evening, Swansea was buzzing with crowds of arty types milling between no less than 5 galleries opening exhibitions on the same night. I dropped into the effervescent Galerie Simpson to start with, then up to the magnificent Glynn Vivian Art Gallery for the opening of “Portrait Of The Artist – Käthe Kollwitz”. I’ve been desperate to see this show, which had been at Ikon in Birmingham last year, in partnership with the British Museum and supported by the Dorset Foundation. She is one of my heroes and I love her work so much. I’m a total fangirl.

According to the gallery, “Kollwitz’s unique artistic talent, her technical prowess and intelligence, and above all her humanity, can be seen in this exhibition. There is much about the life and work of Kollwitz that instils hope, that is inspiring and life affirming, despite the burden of hardship and sorrow carried by so many of her figures and by herself. Her emphasis was often on what was distinctive about women’s experience, including the fundamental nature and potency of maternal love. She believed that art could be a force for good in society.”

And there’s a book! I had to have it. The exhibition carries on until the 17th of June and I might be running a weekend printmaking masterclass there, linked to the exhibition……. It’s worth a trip to Swansea to see this and the other shows on at the moment at Galerie Simpson, Volcano, Mission Gallery and Elysium, but not on Mondays.

 

 

 

Off And On

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Sometimes the ideas flow and I don’t have enough hours in the day to get them down onto paper, other times I struggle for inspiration, ideas fall flat and I find it hard to do any artwork. Like many other artists, I have strategies to try and get through these lean times. One is to do lots of sketchbook work and another is to have something creative that I can pick up and put down. I’ve been working on this collage, off and on, for a few months now. When the ideas really dry up, I just get absorbed in this, it’s on a piece of A4 card and the visual matter is mostly from old landscape calendars and National Geographic magazines, ripped and stuck down with Pritt stick glue. It relieves the pressure of constantly trying to be creative.

Home Comfort

Sparta 2018

In times of stress and worry, I retreat into my home. It’s my cave, my fortress, my refuge and my comfort. I close the door on the bad old world outside and batten down the hatches to weather any storms that life throws at me. My chubby cat, Sparta Puss is an integral part of my home comfort. She sits and purrs and brings a feeling of peace and calm and normality.

I work part-time for the homelessness charity, Crisis, as a fine art tutor and I really appreciate how lucky I am to be able to go to my own home which is safe and secure and warm and dry. I am lucky that I don’t have to endure living in a war zone or a refugee camp. The insecurity and stress of not having anywhere to call your own, not being able to close your door onto the outside world and feel safe, it is awful.

To find out more about the work done by Crisis, please click here.

Colouring In

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I rarely paint, it’s not a medium I feel much affinity with but I’ve been working on a painting the past couple of days, it’s for someone special. The reason I don’t paint much is because I feel that all my creativity goes into drawing and once I’ve got the drawing as I want it, painting just seems like colouring in, which is quite nice but nowhere near as creative, in my opinion, as drawing. Although I know a lot of painters who wouldn”t agree with me on this.

I’m using acrylic paints, thinned with water, to paint translucent layers of pigment onto a white primed canvas. This is a small detail of the painting in progress.

 

 

So Many Creatives

Kat Ridgeway

 

The exhibition to celebrate International Women’s Day at Swansea’s Cinema & Co is coming to an end, just one more day. It’s been a privilege to work with such an amazing group of creative people. Here’s most of the wall-based art in the show – I didn’t manage to photograph a couple of the pieces. There were also films and entrepreneurs at the opening event, a real celebration of women’s achievements.

 

 

Artists, designers, performers and filmmakers are Aida Garton, Ally Jay Phillips, Alyson Williams, Amber Hiscott, Amelia Thomas (Unity), Amy Goldring, Angie Stevens, Ann Jordan, Ann Lucas, Avant Cymru, Carol Lawrence, Catrin Jones, Chris Bird-Jones, Claudia Mollzahn, Emma Cownie, Hana Scoular, Kara Seaman, Kat Ridgeway, Kate Bell, Laura Niehorster, Leila Bebb, Leanne Vaughan Phillips, Lynne Bebb, Nazma Botanica, Natie M Davies, Nicky Stitch, Patricia McKenna Jones, Rose Davies (Rosie Scribblah), Rhona Tooze, Rufus Mufasa, Sally Davies, Sally Price, Tina Wisby. Plus entrepreneurs Anna Redfern and Goggi Shazi.

Thank you, you are amazing women.

Here’s one of the films, featuring artwork by Aida Garton.

Mother And Daughter

Lynne B

I organised an exhibition and event for International Women’s Day last week at Swansea’s Cinema & Co, showcasing women artists, makers and entrepreneurs from the Swansea area. Mother and daughter Lynne and Leila Bebb are featured. Lynne Bebb is a sculptor and printmaker and has exhibited a trio of screenprinted monotypes with her daughter Leila as the subject. Leila is a performance artist and we showed this film of her contemporary dance piece, “Shattering“. So much talent in one family.

Shattering from Lynne Bebb on Vimeo.

 

The film was choreographed by Jessie Brett with original music by Jered Sorkin and supported by The Welfare, Ystradgynlais.

 

BogArt

BogArt, art in the toilets, is an innovative feature of the quirky artspace that is Swansea’s Cinema & Co. I took advantage of these spaces to display work by some of Swansea’s female creatives for the exhibition I organised for International Women’s Day on March 8th (continues until 20th). I like displaying art in toilets, lots of people get to see it. And if Marcel Duchamp could display an urinal as a work of art, I’m happy to put art in the bogs. It has been such a pleasure to exhibit work by so many talented and committed women artists and I am privileged to be surrounded by so much creativity.

Herstory
‘Herstory’, a collaboration by Scribblah (me) and Unity (Amelia Thomas)

 

ally jay
Four vaginas by Ally Jay Phillips, named after areas of Swansea: Wind Street, Castle Gardens, The Bay and The Kingsway.

 

Drawings by Doodlemum (Angie Stevens)
Drawing en plein air by Scribblah me)

On the left, drawings by Doodlemum (Angie Stevens) and on the right, drawing en plein air from Scribblah (me)

vagina herstory
Art in the toilet – BOGART!

The Cat Sat On The Cupboard

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Still tired and not done any new art this week, so here’s one from the archives (that’s a posh way of saying the big cupboard upstairs that my sketchbooks are in). Here’s Sparta Puss hanging out on top of a cupboard, likes cats do. Sparta is a naughty Tortie. A very naughty Tortie.

Normal Service Will Resume Soon …..

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It’s been a very busy, frantic, few weeks and I’m really tired so haven’t done any artwork, not even a quick scribble, for a couple of days, so here’s a sleeping cat. Normal service will resume soon 🙂

Coming Full Circle

b in
The triptych from the inside

A few weeks ago I was privileged to join one of Fern Smith‘s women’s circles, part of her ‘Seven Sundays In Spring’, walking through the beautiful deer park in Dynefwr, Llandeilo, drawing an extraordinary wintry tree in my sketchbooks, here’s one of the sketches below… 

Drawing 3
One of my original sketchbook drawings

I have thousands of sketches and dozens of sketchbooks locked away in cupboards and I only choose a few to develop into another piece of work, and this is one of those times. I was invited to do a pop-up drawing at the Women4Resources event for International Women’s Day at Creative Bubble today. I decided to do a triptych onto detail paper that I taped to the window, so that people outside could see the drawing developing without coming in – it’s a democratic way of doing art because it reaches out to people, not everyone is comfortable coming into an artspace.

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I started out with my home-made walnut ink, blocking in the base of the tree and working into it with sanguine conté crayon to develop a texture. Then I brushed in the upright trunks.

 

Then I switched to white gouache and brushed in another layer of uprights, trunks and branches. And finally, I used a black conté crayon to work tiny marks into the area of the sky behind the branches.

The work looks different from the outside, with the white branches much more prominent and the black sky almost invisible. I guess that if I ever exhibit it I’ll have to consider framing them with glass both sides.

a out
The triptych from the outside

And so full circle, from the drawing en plein air to the triptych in the window, from Fern’s creative women’s circle to International Women’s Day, it feels complete.