I spent many days between February and August this year travelling across South Wales drawing ancestral stones, which were exhibited in The Workers Gallery in September. Today, I decided to break open my new brown paper sketchbook and conté crayons and started to redraw my previous work, not copying it but using it to develop ideas and new directions in drawing. I normally work directly from life en plein air, so this is quite different for me. I did quite a few and I really enjoyed it. I might just go and fill the sketchbook this way.
I have work featured in two exhibitions at the moment – in The Workers Gallery in The Rhondda Valley and at Llanover Hall in Cardiff, both lovely venues and worth a look-in if you’re in the area.
Here I am with over a hundred luscious leftover prints just arrived from The Workers Gallery in The Rhondda Valley
Once upon a time, the printmakers of Wingtip Press in Boise, Idaho, USA were cleaning out their flat files and found dozens of little scraps of printmaking papers jamming up the drawers. Realising they probably weren’t alone with the dilemma of what to do with all those too-precious-to-throw-out leftover paper scraps, they issued an invitation to fellow printmakers around the globe to participate in a print exchange to use all those lovely bits of paper. Artists submit an edition of 14 miniature prints and received a dozen prints in return. One print is included in a silent auction to raise funds for the Hunger Relief Task Force in the State and the final one of the edition joins an international touring exhibition.
Now in its sixth year, the exchange include printmakers from Australia to Arizona, Canada to Colorado, Nevada to Norway to New Zealand, Korea to Kansas, Wales to Washington, and places in between.
The box of over a hundred little prints recently crossed the Atlantic from Reno to The Rhondda and is now about to be exhibited in Swansea Print Workshop through December and January.
My collection of twelve prints from Leftovers VI from artists across the world
The show opens with a traditional Welsh tea, with lashings of bara brith and other luscious home-made cakes, from 5 – 7 on Tuesday December 6th at Swansea Print Workshop and runs daily from 10.30 – 4.00 daily (except Mondays) with a break over the Xmas holidays, until January the 8th.
Ming The Merciless is elderly now, sixteen years old, one-eyed and has arthritis in her paws so she can’t scratch her claws anymore and they need to be clipped. Problem is, she’s a complete psycho! There’s no way we can do it so for the past couple of years she’s been going to the vets every few months to have them clipped by professionals. But they’re terrified of her so she’s been having a general anaesthetic each time. They’ve now decided that she’s too old and frail to have a general if it’s for a non-life threatening condition. So today we tried something new. We slipped her a Mickey Finn in some food and Husb took her to the vet an hour later when she was well woozy and could barely stand up. Even in that state she was incredibly violent and took out two vets. They managed to do her back paws and one front paw but had to give up! When she came home, she had the munchies and scoffed a ton of food, then crashed out. I don’t know what was in the tablet they gave her.
I have work featured in two exhibitions at the moment – in The Workers Gallery in The Rhondda Valley and at Llanover Hall in Cardiff, both lovely venues and worth a look-in if you’re in the area.
Sometimes, when I’m scribbling away, I have a little furry helper. Quite often in fact. Her name is Sparta Puss. I am her trained monkey.
I have work featured in two exhibitions at the moment – in The Workers Gallery in The Rhondda Valley and at Llanover Hall in Cardiff, both lovely venues and worth a look-in if you’re in the area.
Up at The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir tonight at the opening of their Winter Group show. It’s fab. I have two pieces in the exhibition and quite a few more scattered around the gallery. The group show is a great mix of work, interpretations and inspirations based on a poem by Mike Church.
It isn’t glamorous, being an artist. It’s a constant slog. Underpinning my art practice is a daily routine of just that, practice. And at the heart of that practice is simple drawing, usually in sketchbooks. I draw anybody, anywhere, at every opportunity. Random faces in random places.
I have a new piece of art in this exhibition in Cardiff. Please drop by if you’re in the area 🙂
A while back, I did some drawings of artists who inspire me and from those drawings I made some silkscreen stencils and printed up a series of nine images. Then I scanned a couple of those screenprints and had them made into small rubber stamps and that’s what I’m working with now, experimenting and seeing what I can come up with. A few weeks ago I went to a short paper-making course at Swansea’s City Farm and the paper, although lovely, isn’t particularly good for drawing so I’ve been trying to come up with some uses for it. So here’s a mashup of a little stamp of Käthe Kollwitz on Japanese Shiohara paper set onto a piece of hand made nettle paper mounted onto Daler Rowney Ebony paper. Oooohhh three papers in one little piece. Lovely.
I recently did a short residency at the lovely Galerie Simpson in Swansea and experimented with developing three dimensional forms from paper, print and text. I started out by making some little maquettes to try out techniques and I’m starting to think about how I might use them. Husb hung an LED bulb into one of them and I photographed it against a dark background. Ideas are starting to form. Hhhmmmmmmmm……
The three dimensional artwork I made during my residency is now being displayed in Cardiff at the Women’s Arts Association exhibition until December the 12th.
I almost always carry a sketchbook and I’ll sit quietly and scribble wherever I am. I was at a symposium a few weeks ago and this was one of the speakers, an immaculately dressed and groomed man. Of course he was, he’s European. Oh dear, I’m indulging in scandalous stereotypes here but the British men present just didn’t cut the mustard at all.
Here’s one I did a while back of Brits in the sunshine…..
Er Gof (In Memorial) #9, a reduction lino print inspired by the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Today is Remembrance Sunday. In Britain there is a poignant service to remember the war dead, not glorifying war, but remembering the awful cost of war. So much of my work is about remembrance and memorial.
The song ‘1916’ by Mötorhead, possibly the best anti-war song ever. So sad, so gentle…..
A mashup of one of my stamp prints of German anti-war artist, Kathe Kollwitz, and a newspaper cutting
I am hugely inspired by Käthe Kollwitz, the German feminist, socialist, anti-war artist who died in 1945, after a lifetime of using her art as political protest, being banned by both the First Reich and the Third Reich.
“We’re Here Because We’re Here”, an extraordinary UK-wide public art event commemorating the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, one of the most moving artworks I have ever experienced.
And now, more than ever, we need to remember the real lessons of war, the loss, the pain, the grief and learn from them. But will we?
My latest artwork, inspired by Käthe Kollwitz, is on show at the Womens Arts Association until December the 12th…….
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