I’m finally getting to grips with the lino blocks of text I started back at the beginning of lockdown 2020. I’m making mask shapes out of cotton and printing them with the words and phrases I carved into lino, reflecting my feelings and observations over the period. But these are not masks. They are NOT PPE. They are artworks and they will be exhibited in “Pitchfork” at The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir from April 7th.
The Workers is a fab gallery, in a tiny village in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. It’s run by artists Gayle Rogers and Chris Williams and unlike many galleries that intimidate and exclude, The Workers is a loved part of the local community. Give it a go. It’s a lovely area to visit anyway.
The book of the journey of the Boar Hunt (Y Twrch Trwyth) has been in print for a whole week and is selling well, with virtually no publicity, just word of mouth via social media. The book is based on the theory that the route of The Boar Hunt in the Mabinogion includes most of the major Neolithic and Bronze Age stone monuments across South Wales. Dewi has painstakingly mapped them and co-written this book (with Olwyn Pritchard) which is not just learned but also full of entertaining stories, humour and art. Many of the works I did out in the field – literally – are in a full colour centre spread including this one, Garreg Goch, The Red Stone which is in a hedge surrounded by barbed wire. It’s one of my favourite stones and favourite paintings.
Garreg Goch.
I spent three years traipsing across the hidden (and mucky) places of South Wales with pre-historian Dewi Bowen and filmmaker Melvyn Williams, drawing and painting along the way, while Dewi researched and Melvyn filmed.
The book is beautifully printed and available for £15.00 GBP plus postage and packing. Please contact me if you want to know more. And there will be a proper book launch in Swansea on March 31st at GS Artists on Swansea’s High Street.
It’s #Caturday Saturday again and here’s a drawing from my sketch archives, I guess about 7 or 8 years ago. I had a very comfy Ikea Poang chair at the time but Sparta Puss liked it as much as I did. Guess who won out on this particular evening? I drew into my sketchbook with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens.
I scribbled this little one hard at work creating a collage at GS Artists last Friday. The group was inspired by an exhibition supporting a new book by Catrin Saran James, “Modernist Swansea”. In the background is a quilt based on some iconic tile designs around the city centre, sadly disappearing, by local artist Laura Chrostowski Jenkins – more on the artist here. GS Artists run a free weekly Friday art / craft session, the 9to90 Creative Community.
I’ve finished my painting of two siblings on the beach at night watching the bioluminescence. It’s been a long haul. I don’t often work from photographs and I don’t find it easy, I prefer to work from life, but this was a good exercise. I did a lot of the painting upside down – the canvas and the photo not me 😀
Here are the stages I went through, starting out by recycling an old canvas with a couple of rough layers of acrylic gesso, to get a textured surface. I covered it with an opaque Cadmium Orange ground and then blocked in some areas with Mars Black, before working on the details, upside down. I used Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics.
I’m experimenting with making my own stamps from Toyobo photopolymer letterpress plates. I had a try the other week with a different make, which didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, but this material is much better, much crisper with more detail. I tried out three exposure and three curing times and then printed them up with Intaglio Printmaker’s Etching Ink Shop Mix Drypoint Black. I printed them onto a page from my sketchbook and made notes.
Notes in my sketchbook.
I used a photograph of Sparta Puss as my source material, put it through the Threshold function in Adobe Photoshop and did an Invert to make a negative (I also tried out a positive as well) and printed out onto acetate to get a transparency.
Back in the days before Covid19, remember those? Back in the days before Covid19, I used to exhibit regularly with my friend, fellow artist Patti McKenna. We’re both working class women and we are committed to democratising art and where art is displayed. And there’s nothing more democratic than a toilet. We all need to pee. So we put on exhibitions of art in the rather nice and quite spacious toilets at Swansea’s Cinema & Co.ffee. And we called it BogArt! Because it was in the bogs 😀
Detail by Patti McKenna.
We were locked out of the bogs during Covid19 and life has sort of got in the way a bit too, but now we’re back on track and we’ve just put up our first post-Covid BogArt in time for International Women’s Day. It’s a collection of drawings featuring women from our sketchbooks: women dancing; women demonstrating; women performing; women listening; women chatting. Pop in for a coffee and cake, or check out their events, and visit our exhibitions in the bogs.
FINALLY! The book of the journey of the Boar Hunt (Y Twrch Trwyth) has been published. I spent three years traipsing across the hidden (and mucky) places of South Wales with pre-historian Dewi Bowen and filmmaker Melvyn Williams, drawing and painting along the way, while Dewi researched and Melvyn filmed.
The book is based on the theory that the route of The Boar Hunt in the Mabinogion includes most of the major Neolithic and Bronze Age stone monuments across South Wales. Dewi has painstakingly mapped them and co-written this book (with Olwyn Pritchard) which is not just learned but also full of entertaining stories, humour and art. Many of the works I did out in the field – literally – are in a full colour centre spread (see first picture).
Detail from the front cover.
The book is beautifully printed and available for £15.00 GBP plus postage and packing. Please contact me if you want to know more. And there will be a proper book launch in Swansea SOON!
It’s #Caturday Saturday again and here’s a blast from the past, Sparta Puss back in 2016. She has a range of expressions but this sulky, slightly annoyed one is a favourite of hers.
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