The Dragon, The Star And The Crescent Moon

Rose Davies invitation

Back in April 2014 I travelled to Pakistan with another Swansea Printmaker to do a residency at the Zaira Zaka Print Studio near Rawalpindi. It was an amazing and exhausting experience – jet lag, culture shock, a visit to the ancient monuments at Taxila; working day and night in the studio with my fellow artists to make enough work for a show; the exhibition launch at the fabulous Satrang Gallery in Islamabad opened by the British Ambassador; the hectic weekend in Lahore for my birthday; a full schedule of meetings with artists and gallery owners when we came back from Crazy Lahore, home, reverse culture shock, jet lag!

Rose Hannah Zaira studio
Hannah Lawson, Zaira Zaka and me in Zaira’s fabulous print studio near Rawalpindi.

When I got home, I was pitched straight back into normal hectic life and it’s taken a while to get my thoughts in order, to get back to the experience, to draw inspiration and develop new work from it.

But something’s finally happening! My fellow printmaker, Hannah Lawson and I are bringing our experiences back home in a four-day pop-up studio at Swansea Print Workshop, from Friday October the 23rd to Monday October the 26th .

ancient monument Taxila
Hanna, Zaira and me at the Taxila Buddhist UNESCO ancient monument in north-west Punjab.

We’re kicking off with a family-friendly Welsh – Pakistani tea from 4.30 – 7pm on Friday the 23rd, with Welsh Cakes and Bara Brith, Pink Chai and Builder’s Brew, Pakoras and Samosas and home made chutneys and jams. So if you’re in the area, please pop in.

And the Dragon, the Star and the Crescent Moon? Those are our flags. Pretty cool flags, huh?

I blogged more or less daily while I was in Pakistan and here’s one I did at the beginning of the journey.

One From The Archives 20: Spiky Purple Hair

The first time I blogged this image was a turning point for me, as can be seen here. This painting featured in the last ever exhibition I curated at The Brunswick in Swansea. It is based on a drawing of one of our more colour coordinated life models.

Oil on canvas: Purple Hair [detail]
Oil on canvas: Purple Hair [detail]
He had a habit of matching his contact lenses with his hair colour which made for a very striking look. He was also able to get into quite dramatic poses and hold them for as long as necessary.

In this painting I have echoed the brush work on the figure with that in the background. Almost the only thing separating the two is the thick, dark outline of the model and the shock of purple hair flowing behind him.

Sometimes it is good to just play with the surface of a work and push the paint around to create effects. Most of the piece was done using oilbars and rags wrapped round my fingers.  It can be the subtlest of differences in the direction of the paint and colour that lift a subject and make it three dimensional.

The Painting “Spiky Purple Hair” is available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the link here to go directly to it or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.

Allotment Break

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I spent almost all of September at The Bagpuss Window, a semi-derelict shop that became a spontaneous artspace for a few weeks before demolition. Ironically, after our awful summer of torrential rain, September was glorious and I was stuck indoors for most of it. I took the keys back to the owners last Thursday and spent the next 3 days taking an allotment break. It’s been neglected and needs a lot of maintenance as well as catching up with some Autumn sowing. It’s been lovely to be in the fresh air and gentle late sunshine, digging for hours. I love digging, I could do it all day. I planted some Meteor peas today and a late sowing of kale yesterday. I shovelled some manure onto a bed to lie fallow for a month or so, ready for a November sowing of Aquadulce broad beans.

Rain is forecast for the next couple of days so I can stay in and take stock of everything that happened at The Bagpuss Window. I took loads of photos and did a lot of filming so I need to start collating all the images and then decide what I’m going to do with them. So much happened and it would be a shame not to document and publish it. Here’s a detail of the large wall drawing I did. Most of it was spontaneous and done under the influence of gong music. More of that to come…..

One From The Archives 19: Eve Sleeps

I love the versatility of this method. It has a fantastic range of darks and lights, as well as a dazzling palette.  A full-colour monotype is also a unique artwork because of the way the ink is applied to the paper.

Eve Sleeps

In this print I have used the warm, vibrant reds and yellows of the background to counter the cooler more sedate greens and blues of the foreground. This gives the feeling of a woman enjoying a deep, peaceful sleep as passion and turmoil stir at a more primal level.

Ordinarily the cooler colours would be used in the background to give a sense of depth or distance, whereas the lively colours like red would be used sparingly because they tend to jump out at the viewer.

By reversing this convention I have emphasised the hidden emotions and, at the same time, almost divided the image into two separate works. One below of a calm, sleeping woman and above, an abstract sensory overload.

The monotype “Eve Sleeps” is available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the link here to go directly to it or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.

 

Art Of The Day

I am rather pleased to announce that one of my paintings has been chosen to feature as today’s “Art Of The Day” on the on-line gallery Artfinder. The Art Of The Day feature can be found here.

Fangirl painting
Fan Girl

Fan Girl, which I blogged about last week here, is a painting inspired by my teenage years. It is available for sale on Artfinder here.  I have been on the site for about a month now so I am delighted about the additional coverage.  Click on the link on the right hand side of this blog to see other works for sale.

Bendy Bus

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After nearly a month doing art in a semi-derelict shop (The Bagpuss Window) I’m back to my normal routine and life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop on Thursdays. This evening’s model goes by the name of Ben D’Busse, a pun on a local traffic experiment that turned out bad!

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I drew this with a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 using a free Markers app. I put in a grey ground to start with and then did most of the drawing with my fingertips, using the stylus to put in detailed line work towards the end. Here’s a slide show of the drawing in different stages of development.

One From The Archives 18: Rinascere #10

I often use the idea of an individual enveloped by darkness. I find it both isolates the model and allows me to focus on small, significant details or design elements. It concentrates attention on the central figure as well as exposing the nature of the materials used.

Rin 10 WordPress

Here, the dark washes show up the texture of the paper so it becomes a feature of the composition. The highlights, using white conté crayon, do the same at the other end of the spectrum.

This drawing is part of a series I did using the rinascere technique. Rinascere means to be reborn or to revive and is the root of the word ‘renaissance’.

My first blog about this drawing, along with others in the series can be found here. The background washes are my own addition to the technique and further enhance the impression of age and tradition.

I used Indian ink with a traditional dip pen and conté crayon on handmade paper, prepared with black and sepia ink washes.

The drawing “Rinascere #10” is available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the link here to go directly to them or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.

One From The Archives 17: Leg Up

This model is very physically active and as a result, very confident about her body and the poses she strikes. Here she is leaning back with her leg up in a devil-may-care sort of way.

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It always surprising just how much the physical presence of a model can reflect their underlying personality. My life drawing is a way of maintaining and expanding my skills as well as exploring ways of expressing this deeper meaning through the depiction of the human body.

You can see from my fist blog about this drawing here, that I was mainly concerned about the technical aspects of the process at the time. With hindsight it is easier to see the expressionistic nature of the drawing and how the choice of materials helps to bring out the drama.

I like to recycle materials, especially papers and mounting boards and I prepared this piece with an ink wash, dribbled randomly across it before I began to draw.

The drawing “Leg Up” is available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the link here to go directly to them or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.

Working On Me

working on me
Chalk and charcoal ephemeral drawing onto newspaper

I’m reaching the end of my time drawing on the wall at The Bagpuss Window, Swansea’s pop-up artspace. Tomorrow is our last day and the keys go back to Coastal Housing Group on Thursday so that the building can be demolished to make way for new social housing. So it’s going to be put to good use. The final part of my drawing is a drawing of me drawing. There’s still a fair bit of work to do on the face because the likeness isn’t very good and I had to resist the temptation to shave a couple of stone off my body! My right hand also needs a lot of work but I hope to have the whole thing finished by 5pm tomorrow so I can take a final photograph and then – the end…….

 

 

One From The Archives 16: Dystopia

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Dystopia

This is an etching of one of the male models I work with. It was developed from the nude study below, which I drew with Renaissance materials, inspired by artwork I did for a television series about da Vinci.

Each printmaking technique has its own advantages. This one allows me to indulge myself, using all manner of materials to make the image. I can push the ink around and draw as freely and as quickly as I like, knowing that the engraving process will capture all of the detail and subtleties.

I first blogged about this work in 2012 when I was introduced to the technique at Swansea Print Workshop.

It’s quite a bleak subject and I love the way the figure seems to be struggling to pull himself out of the darkness, into the light.  I suppose we all feel like we are surrounded by darkness at some point in our lives and art is not and should not always be about sunshine and landscapes. Sometimes it has to show us our fears and fragility.

Using more than one medium means I can explore a subject in greater depth and develop my thoughts and feelings about it as I go through the range of options available. You have to go deeper into a subject before you can come out the other side.

The print above is a photopolymer steel plate etching, hand-printed by me using oil pigment onto BFK Rives cotton rag paper.

The drawing below is in Indian ink using a traditional dip pen, on handmade paper, prepared with black and sepia ink washes.

Rinascere #1
Rinascere #1

The print “Dystopia” and the drawing “Rinascere #1” are available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the links here and here to go directly to them or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.