Popping Up

The Taliesin Foyer
The Taliesin Foyer-Bar

I’ll be popping up at The Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea throughout September with my fellow artist, Sylvie Evans, from the 15 Hundred Lives art collective. Our exhibition, “People And Place”, with painter Graham Parker, is downstairs in the Oriel Ceri Richards Gallery, running until September the 26th and we’ve been given space in the upstairs foyer-bar, just outside the theatre, to have a pop-up studio where visitors will be able to see us doing what artists do, making our art. We’ll be there for a few hours before some of the films and plays in the September programme.

Our little pop-up studio
Our little pop-up studio

I’ll be there on the following Wednesdays from 4.30-7.30 pm:

September 2nd / September 9th / September 16th / September 23rd

And collagist Sylvie Evans will be there on Fridays from 4.30-7.30 pm:

September 4th / September 11th / September 25th

Some of Graham Parker's painting studio
Some of Graham Parker’s painting studio

We’ve installed some of Graham’s painting studio and Sylvie will be working on her collages when she’s there and I will be doing live-action drawing. Would be lovely to see you 🙂

Corsets, Publicity, and the Venice Biennale

I’ve caught a heavy cold and I’m going to get an early night and sulk! So I’m reposting Melanie Ezra’s artblog instead. There’s loads of arty things in it, including some stuff of mine……

melaniehonebone's avatarMelanie Honebone

Summer is drawing to an end and it’s quite a quiet time for me. I’m about to hit the ground running in September though and have so many projects about to kick off it’s ridiculous. One of these is an exhibition I’m co-curating at the end of September called A Victorian Tapestri which aims to create a dialogue between Victorian attitudes and the evidence that remains here in contemporary Swansea. Already artists from all over the country are considering and creating, delving and deliberating. From Victorian corsets to workhouse soundscapes it looks like this show will have it all.

Then there’s a little matter of the Venice Biennale. I’ve created some miniature versions from the Structured Chaos series for the Venice Vending Machine which will be opening at the end of next month.

I’m also about to kick off a series of photography workshops called Bringing Gower Home 

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from bees to bears

Terrific exhibition coming soon to Swansea Print Workshop – oooohhh!!!

drawntoprint's avatar15 Years, people and printmaking

An exhibition of prints, drawings and collage

Viv Rhule explores limestone creatures and the plight of bees through ink, pencil and print Kara Seaman creates prints and illustrations about animals from nearby places and faraway lands

PRIVATE VIEW on Friday 4 September from 6 to 9 pm

Continues on Saturday & Sunday 5 & 6 September, 11 to 4 pm

FREE EVENT | ALL WELCOME

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A Victorian Corset Part 1

Today I started something new. After months of making artwork for my exhibition at Oriel Ceri Richards, I launched into my next piece for a group exhibition at the end of September, “A Victorian Tapestri” based on Victorian Swansea. I’m doing something with cyanotype and a Victorian corset. Cyanotype is an early Victorian method of photography, one of the earliest, invented by the astronomer Sir John Herschel. I am using an historic pattern of a Victorian corset by Butterick and I have cut the pieces out of a heavyweight Somerset printmaking paper, a beautiful soft white, acid-free, cotton, deckle edge paper (250gsm) from St. Cuthbert’s Mill in Wells, Somerset. They’ve been making fine papers there for about 300 years. I like the idea of working with very old patterns, materials and techniques. Now, what am I going to do with it?

Quirky And Lurky

On The Map press

Look at what I’ve been getting up to with fellow artist Melanie Ezra. We recently developed a quirky artist map of Swansea, edited by Alban Low and published by Sampson Low Ltd. Our local newspaper, The South Wales Evening Post, did this feature on us today (thanks Jenny White), lurking around Swansea Castle. I got the crease down my face. Ho hum. 😀

If you want to buy a copy of the map, at a ridiculously low price, please follow this link here.

Psychedelic Male Nude

 

 

Male nude with stripes
Male nude with stripes

Here’s another of my watercolour nudes from quite a while back, about 7 years I think. Doesn’t time fly!!!! I stopped doing them because I thought I was getting into a rut, but looking back at this series recently, I really rather like this technique so I think I’ll prepare stretch some papers for life drawing next week and do some more. I’m using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens for the linework and Winsor & Newton half pan, artist grade watercolours with some rather stiff sable brushes.

My most recent body of work, over 2 dozen new drawings and lino cuts, is being exhibited at Oriel Ceri Richards Gallery until September the 26th and here’s a short video about it if you’d like to take a look 😀

Sun, Storm And A Nude

 

A watercolour nude
A watercolour nude

After the excitement of last night’s opening of our group exhibition, ‘People And Place’, Husb and I had a lazy day. We went for a walk in the sunshine and treated ourselves to lunch in a lovely local restaurant, Mosaic. It seems like I haven’t had a day off for ages. It’s not just making the artwork – over 2 dozen new pieces – but there’s all the framing, labelling, publicity, inviting, marketing………

So today I’m blogging another one from my archives, a life drawing in watercolour, using Winsor & Newton half pan artist watercolours onto Cotman watercolour paper with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens for the linework.

Now we’ve battened down the hatches because there’s supposed to be a storm on the way; today’s sunshine was short-lived and tomorrow it’s back to work. Not much rest for the self-employed.

If you want to find out more about my current exhibition, here’s a short video about it.

 

Open At Last

20150821_182741
Some of my drawings and linocut prints

So our exhibition is finally open! Loads of people came to Oriel Ceri Richards in absolutely filthy weather and it was buzzing. Lovely evening. It runs until September the 26th and now I’m going to bed. For about a week. G’night 🙂 zzzzzzzzzzzz

20150821_175950
Rose Davies (Rosie Scribblah), Graham Parker, Sylvie Evans.

Blue Nude Reflected

Pat reflected

Here’s another from the archives, when I went through a watercolour phase at life drawing group. I like to use watercolour in a choppy fashion, more like a gouache. This older model used to be a dancer and has a very lithe body which is so interesting to draw, a bit like Egon Schiele’s models. I used Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens for the linework and Winsor & Newton artist’s half pan watercolours onto a heavy Cotman watercolour paper. It’s important to use the best artist quality materials, cheaper ones will fade. The drawing was done at Swansea Print Workshop which has a large drawing room with mirrors.

“People And Place” – The Video

Rose 2

Here’s a short video about the art collective I’m in. It shows the 3 of us, a painter, a collagist and a scribbler / printmaker, at work. We’re called “15 Hundred Lives” and we have our first major group exhibition, “People And Place” starting tomorrow (Friday 21st August, 6-8pm) at Oriel Ceri Richards in the Taliesin Arts Centre and running until September the 26th. The Taliesin cinema will be showing our video as a short before their feature films while the exhibition is on.

Here’s our video on YouTube, I’ll be uploading it to Vimeo soon……

It’s got some great footage of the antique Columbian Press I use down at Swansea Print Workshop.