The wagon faces North

           

Autumn, Winter, 2016-17

   

The Wagon studio has moved! It faces north ...............

I 'm now surrounded by Ash trees, Wych Elm and Elder, Hazel and Hawthorn bushes in the foreground and the gaunt branches of a long dead Elm across my eye line as I look out of the window.
Changing position has also given me fresh inspiration for my printmaking: to translate the tangled branch shapes into collograph form I cut out paper shapes, pull threads out of garden twine, cut into the netting that holds the Christmas oranges and PVA them onto a card surface.
This is how it looks - the collograph plate is on the top, part of the print is showing underneath......

Getting the body of colour on the I wanted for the background proves difficult so I experiment with painting acrylic washes and print the collograph plate on top, trying to get the effect of the winter branches against sunset colours.

Late winter 2017
If I look out of the wagon on the south side the muddy track leads down to the farm. Its February, the hedgerows are still bare against the late afternoon sky. I use the garden twine again to recreate the hedgerow shapes, and this time use carborundum grit to get a muddy surface effect of the track.
i use background washes of transparent colour for the winter sky.

I ve enlarged the image so that the textures stand out - the carborundum makes the lane look a bit too rocky, and controlling the textures to give the perspective illusion difficult. 

Cocksfoot, Meadow foxtail, Yorkshire fog.

August 22nd

'Cocksfoot, meadow foxtail, yorkshire fog'. Some names of the hayfield grasses relate to their visual appearance - and some to what they do, 'quaking grass,creeping bent, wavy hairgrass'. Some sound shakespearean - 'sweet vernal grass', and some a puzzle - where does 'Timothy' come from?
At this time of the summer they change from green to tawny to ochres, their seed heads waving at the margins of the fields against the dark brambles and hedges.
I make monotypes using a roller to simplify the shapes of field, dark clumps of trees, and sky. Its possible to scratch into the ink to create texture, to use oil pastel,collage and overprint- all these methods I want to experiment with.
For now I paint the simple shape of cocksfoot in gouache in the foreground -

A new moth has appeared! Against the backgrounds of some monoprints of the streambed I printed a moth from an old collograph, its dark wings set against the grainy textures in semi camouflage-
A collograph is a print made from a low relief surface with various textured objects glued on- found objects,sand, wallpaper, string etc-

The original moth collograph was based on a real one but has now transformed into a moth symbol -

A lament- where are they all?

Just three weeks away from the start of Open studios so framing and planning preparations are in progress. Come and visit me in the wagon ! Prints, paintings, cards will all be available to buy...

Somerset Arts Week 2016. Open Studio at HootingAsh Farm.

 

     July 14th

The grey shape of the old ash tree frames the gate. A sparrowhawk shoots out of the oak tree and swoops along the hedge. The silver branches of my birthday walnut tree are framed against the red ochre earth of the maize field. Each are moments of experience on our land, and recorded in the six small oil paintings that will be on show in the wagon studio for Somerset Art Weeks Open studios.

Nearly every day I go down the hill to the orchard to check the sheep. The colours of the landscape change with the seasons - in days - I note whats around - birds, insects and flowers. The mood alters as I descend to the lower meadows -  damper, darker- the Redlake stream trickles unseen and secret. In autumn I try to recreate the textures of dead leaves, stone and twigs collected in the stream by using the mono print and the dry point processes of printmaking-

Mono prints are one- off images. Thinned oil-based inks are applied onto a sheet of glass or plastic by brush, rollers or cloth. Sections of ink can be wiped away using cloth, cotton wool buds or brush. Texture can be applied and ink scratched out.

Dry point is an intaglio process. Lines are scratched directly onto the plate. As the plate and paper are run through the press the ink is transferred from the plate to the paper to make an image.While we re in the sheep field here's an example of dry point....!

   
Its been exciting combining these two techniques - there are so many possibilities to experiment with texture and line....

On the post next month - Hay meadows and birch trees- and more about the techniques of printmaking that I use.

    

 

The Woods Project

12th September

Creative energies this summer have had to be shared between all things green and growing in the garden, and art work in the wagon, and now it's September, and thoughts turn to the Somerset Arts Week Festival in early October, and the hall in North Wootton (venue 68) where I'm exhibiting my work alongside painters and printmakers, photographers and ceramicists.
One of the exhibits will be a print of 'The Woods', a great project which I worked on with six fellow printmakers. We took the theme and each produced a lino design on a 30mm square piece of lino (either whole or halved), first selecting the best place compositionally for the block, and how it would work as a whole. Here is the final print-

                                                                    

It was printed on a long strip of Japanese paper - Shiramine natural, and because it was too long to put in the press we printed the blocks using a burin or wooden spoon, rubbing with even pressure on the back. I love the result, the design working well with the smaller pieces (lettering and ferns) creating the variety and compositional 'stops'.
My contribution is the oyster mushroom and trees (second left). I have always liked strong bold form and the oyster mushroom displays this in its extraordinary umbrella shape, but  with the delicacy of the gills radiating like spokes from the stem, I put the tree silhouettes on the left to counterbalance the cumulus shape of the mushroom. 

                                                                    

I will be displaying the print individually as well, but printed in grey which gives it an air of mystery!

 Meanwhile look out for the Art Weeks brochures, the festival 2015 is coming soon- 3rd-18th October- there's lots of great and exciting work out there!

                                                                        

 













 

Spring! The Bullfinch, and the Sparrowhawk Tree

 Thursday 7th May - Election day! 

Spring came early this year and took us all by surprise. During the lovely weather in April I watched from my wagon studio as hawthorn leaves unfolded, celandines and primroses bloomed and the hedgerow birds bustled about looking for suitable nest sites. From the feeder outside my window I spotted nuthatches, greater spotted woodpeckers,wrens, robins, hedge sparrows, and various members of the tit family, including the long tailed tits who love to fly around in jolly gangs. Sadly one day I found a dead female bullfinch dead on the grass outside my wagon - she had flown into the large windows of the door - I took a picture of her and used it as the subject for an etching (seen here on the left) and a monoprint (seen here on the right)......

Then I had the idea of combining a collograph on top of a monoprint. Collographs are basically textures stuck on card, and can be any shape or form , they are varnished to enable ink to be pushed into the texture and printed off through the press. Here are two bullfinch collographs made from various feathers I ve found around....

Results coming up in the next blog!

Meanwhile he sparrowhawks are nesting in the old oak tree - here's their tree ......
   

inspired by this I've started a series of some small paintings about our land........ the full collection will be shown in next years open studios.

And so to this year's SAW arts festival in October - I'll be exhibiting my work with Angie Rook and a great group of painters, printmakers and photographers at the Village hall at North Wootton- more later!

January 2015 - Into a New year!

  

Tuesday, 20th January

Into the New Year from what has been for me a sad end of 2014. Before Christmas I lost my sister from cancer and although not unexpected was made all the more poignant by being at a time when all families get together. Her funeral was held in the little saxon church of Postling at the bottom of the North downs in east Kent on a most beautiful sunny winters day. She was an extremely accomplished botanical artist, and at her wake we hung her amazing paintings around the room - she was always modest about her achievements!  Some of them hopefully will be hung in the botanical exhibition at the Westminster hall this Spring- look for her name- Elizabeth Andrews.

Cushion prints - and Vicky (second daughter) and I have been printing the flower lino designs on to coloured linen squares which she will then make into beautiful cushions- they re hung about the kitchen like prayer flags........
                   
                                                                             

and draped over my fathers old desk.........

                                         

We'll keep you informed on the progress of the cushions- They should be on show during arts week this year.


I have started two etchings, both images are based on a silver birch tree on our land. I've been experimenting with aquatint -a resin process which helps you achieve different areas of tone- I stop out the bits that I want to keep light.  Here they are having had three sucessive dips in the acid.....

These are just test prints, they need to be worked into, I would like to print them in colour- and perhaps on silk, apparently Rembrandt did!

Life after Arts Week. The Sweet Pea Project.

Tuesday, 4th November.

A month has passed since the excitement of the Open Studios, and its time to show the progress of the sweet pea linocut that I was working on in the wagon. Taking an early print shows me how much I still need to cut out......

An early print not fully cut out can look quite dramatic and its tempting to leave it like this. I've painted some watercolour just to give me an idea of how the planned colours might look. After more cutting out I make another print -

How different it looks!  I love the effect - almost like a woodcut. I now have to plan and cut a new piece of lino that will print the plain areas of colour. To plan this I take a print on tracing paper, then make a collage of the shapes of colour. If I lay the tracing paper on top I can see how it might look - the tricky bit will be lining everything up....

The second piece of lino is cut and prints made using the two colours - tomorrow I  hope to print the first detailed linocut over the coloured ones- registering is going to be tricky....... I will be posting the result on my next blog-
Meanwhile on my walks across our land I am stunned by the changing colours of the leaves and the shapes of tree branches beginning to re-emerge. Wild apples hang down in the hedgerow alongside scarlet hips and haws and flamingo pink spindle berries - so much colour!

!