Looking forward

I've been ill with a kidney infection, not nice but the antibiotics have sorted me out and the sun is streaming into the house today making me feel much better and giving me the energy to start tackling the tasks I have been unable to do.

There is a lot of work going on towards the Rally for a frack free Ryedale  on 25th April in Malton. I am very behind with making the banners and placards but think I'll manage to get them all done next week.  Plus cakes, always we have cake!

http://www.nyos.org.uk/

My entry can be found here: http://www.nyos.org.uk/Artists-Makers.aspx?&fR=64&nR=114

My studio has been very neglected so far this year; I have managed to reorganise and tidy it ready for when I have time to get out there and make work.  At least it is ready for North Yorkshire Open Studios.  I am really looking forward to it this year because Jenny Pepper http://www.jennypepper.com/ is opening her studio up as well, so it will make our venue really worth visiting with two artists on site and of course, cake!

I am feeling a bit desperate about studio work; missing the routine of it, especially as this was going to be the year where I concentrate on that as my major activity.  Unfortunately my work with Frack Free Ryedale and Frack Free Kirby Misperton has taken up lots of time, energy and head space, which leaves me in the wrong frame of mind for my own work.  Still, once the rally is over I hope to be able to concentrate again.

 From this:

Studio clear up, from the left over chaos of last year to a reorganised space ready for work and NYOS 15.

To this!

I have finally taken the plunge and having a series of works on paper reproduced using giclee printing.  As a rule, I don't like doing this but these twelve pieces make up one work and to sell one of the originals would destroy it.  Therefor I am very excited to say that thanks to Ian Mitchell's recommendation, http://www.ianmitchellart.com/, I am happy to be working with Norton Print and Frame, http://www.fineart.co.uk/directory/fruit-art-ltd_100032.aspx?DirectorySearchPageId=5, who are excellent.  I will be going to check the proofs on Tuesday and then will give the go ahead for a limited print run of each.  

The series, called Laminar Flow,  is one that was made as an experiment; I wanted to try and express what each season feels like and how they form a whole cycle and to do this, I made twelve pieces, acrylic on paper.  Each painting started out the same or as near the same as hand made paintings can be, and then each successive painting had one more layer added, equally as identical as I could make them. The twelfth painting is therefor much thicker and heavier than the last.  There is one painting for each month of the year; my concerns about the passing of time and memory reflected in each. These were made a few years ago, have been in a local pub for a year and generally forgotten about until I had them home again and realised that they were too good to be stuck on the storage rack.  I'd be happy to sell the piece as a whole but devastated to break them up, hence the giclees.

Here is April:

My plan is to have one or two complete set of prints for sale packaged in archive boxes and then the others available as individual prints.  I may even have packs of cards made, but not sure yet.

Please feel free to leave a comment, I hope you enjoy reading my blog.

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March ends - an update

It has been a hectic end to the month.  Lots of activity for Frack Free Kirby Misperton and Ryedale, I finished the piece for "Democracy Rocks" and helped to set up the exhibition, which opened yesterday. Plus a good experience at a local printers, where I took a series of paintings that work as one piece, to be printed in a short edition of each, with a view to selling some.  I am actually preparing ahead for North Yorkshire Open Studios!

My piece for "Democracy Rocks", The Mud and the Sheen*, is a first for me, because I have never made an installation of my own work before.  I am pleased with the results, although, against my better judgement I have  scattered too much preparatory work at its base, losing the cleanness of where the loops of paper almost touch the floor.  If I ever install it again, elsewhere, I will avoid that.  In the end, it was installed near a back corner of the gallery, simply because it was easier to suspend the work from there and it looks good; the added height of the gallery ceiling enabled me to increase the height of the work too, making it even more relevant to the meaning of the piece.  I have really enjoyed the challenge of creating a two dimensional print and presenting it in three dimensions.

*p194, Jackson Pollock's Abstraction, Timothy J Clark, in Reconstructing Modernism, Art in New York, Paris and Montreal, 1945-1964.  Ed: Serge Guilbaut, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England.

The private view was quite well attended, there has been a lot of media interest too.  I hate posing for photographs, why is it that newspaper photographers always seem to work to such awful, cliche ridden ideas of what makes a good photograph?  It makes me laugh and shudder at the awful banality of it!

I enjoyed being part of the team that set up this extraordinary exhibition that includes work by young people and professional artists.  I can thoroughly recommend a visit and when you do, don't forget to post a vote for your favourite pieces and write on a post it note about what democracy means to you, using the polling booth.  You might even like to have a go at drumming on one of the decorated ballot boxes!

Seasons

Artist Ian Mitchell http://www.ianmitchell-art.com/  recommended Norton Print and Frame http://www.fineart.co.uk/directory/fruit-art-ltd_100032.aspx?DirectorySearchPageId=5  to me as the best people to approach about having some prints made of a series of paintings I made a couple of years ago. I continue to be fascinated by ideas that explore the passage of time.  Called Seasons, the piece comprises 12 paintings, 30 x 40 cm, acrylic on paper. An experimental series, each piece started out exactly the same, or as near as I could get it, given that they are paintings.  

March

Each successive piece was added to in the same way until I reached the final, twelfth painting.  The paintings each represent one month of a year and are a result of careful observation of colour and light levels.  NP&F have produced some superb photographs of each painting and I am really looking forward to going back in a few days to look at the proofs before we go ahead and produce a short edition of ten of each painting.  I plan to have two full sets available, and the rest can be sold separately.  The point of this exercise, because I would not as a rule produce prints of my paintings, is that I cannot sell any individual paintings from the originals as they collectively comprise one piece of work.  

September

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London: Gallery Marathon Part 2

One of the fab food themed window of Fortnum and Masons, with reflections!

Saturday 17th Feb.

Itinerary for the day, Royal Academy:

• 12.30 - Constable, Gainsborough, Turner: and the Making of Landscape
• 4 pm -  Manet: Portraying Life
• Anything else we can cram in!

We set out in good time and arrived in Piccadilly early, discovering Hauser and Wirth Gallery opposite the RA.  http://www.facebook.com/hauserwirth   H&W are showing selected works by Philippe Vandenberg, an artist I have not come across as far as I remember.  Large space, well lit on the ground floor showing very large paintings with disturbing imagery reminiscent of Goya's Disasters of War series of prints. Attempting to make sense of the balance of power and injustices of this world through manipulation of paint and rejecting American conceptualism,  Vandenberg's  Neo-Expressionism shows his attempt to make sense of his world and his own demons.  The smaller works on the other two floors were made on what looked like found pieces of board or bits of old cupboard doors; they had beautiful surfaces that were drawn and painted upon, resulting in quieter work that was also disturbing.  I really loved them, and the gallery space.

Afternoon tea theme!

Seafood?

A quick look at the fab windows of Fortnum and Masons before crossing to the RA and what I can only describe as a distinctly uncomfortable crush that started in the Foyer and got worse as the day progressed.

An interesting show, the Making of Landscape, about the development as a genre of landscape painting in this country.  It only cost £8 and the accompanying informative booklet was free.  There were not that many actual paintings on display, instead, the use of printmaking by both expert print producers and the artists themselves illustrates the growth in popularity of landscape as an expression of the sublime and popular topography.  The exhibition clearly showed the influence of painters such as Claude Lorraine, who used landscape as part of the allegorical meaning in his work.

 The artists' own use of printmaking was more experimental, and therefor, in my opinion more interesting.  The skill of the craftsmen printers such as Robert Wallis and David Lucas is stunning, and seeing the etching/aquatints of Norman Ackroyd in the same show illustrated clearly how far the genre has come, although the manipulation of the techniques employed would not have been so unfamiliar to the earlier artists I suspect.  Other contemporary pieces such as Richard Long's text piece and sculptor John Maine's granite circle take the idea of landscape even further into contemporary thought and practice.  

This is an interesting exhibition, I would recommend it to anyone who is practicing landscape painting, or using landscape as a thread of thought within their work.

We fought our way back out, through the terrible scrum in the foyer of the RA to try and get a table for a treat in Fortnums, but alas, they were fully booked up, so we found a pub for a quick and mediocre lunch, after which we filled in time before our booking for Manet, with a look up and down Cork Street.  Highlights of which were:

• Alan Cristea Gallery  http://www.alancristea.com/exhibitions.php   Julian Opie: Winter The gallery was closed, but oh! this show looks good!  I urge people to get to it if they can - follow the link for a brief description.  We peered through the windows into the darkened interior longingly; it would have made a great companion piece to the RA show.  This work reminded me very much of a more undulating version of Ian Mitchell's linescapes.  http://www.ianmitchell-art.com/

• Mayor Gallery   http://www.mayorgallery.com/index.html  WALTER LEBLANC WORKS ON PAPER & SCULPTURE FROM 1963 - 1985  Just beautiful spare work.  Also, work by  Carlos Cruz-Diez,  beautiful optical colour works that changed as you moved because of how they were constructed with three dimensional planes using some kind of clear perspex like material from what we could make out.  Fab!

• Adam Gallery: Alexander Calder: Graphic Works.  Such beautifully joyous lithographs, made when Calder was at the height of his printmaking career.  The symbols within the prints are so well placed, the colour, saturated primaries and tertiaries well chosen and placed within the picture plane.  I loved them!  They really brought to my mind Calder's miniature circus, a film of which I saw years ago: it may be available on YouTube, I don't know.    While we were there, we went downstairs and found some amazing Barbara Rae's.  I think they were paintings, but I cannot remember clearly.  What I do remember is their amazing colour and surface textures.  We were lucky to see them I think; most of them were still in bubble wrap, a real bonus.  I bought some catalogues from ex exhibitions, of painters I had never heard of, but whose paintings looks really interesting: Hsiao-Mei Lin, Annabelle Hulbert, Alf Lohr.  

After that lot, we needed tea!

Then, back across the road to the RA for the Manet show.  The crowding was worse than earlier and we found it incredibly difficult to see the work properly.  With a little determination, I managed to see most of the pieces but to see and appreciate the hang in each room was impossible.  One of the frustrating things was that there were some walls left bare, with works hung quite closely into other corners, which always creates bottlenecks.  With such a so called "block buster" exhibition, with anticipated huge crowds, this seems perverse curatorial practice.  

It was great to see works by Manet that I had not previously; but I am still trying to digest what I really think about the exhibition as a whole as my overriding memory of it is the over crowding that spoiled the experience.  One painting sticks: the picture of Berthe Morrisot in Mourning, grieving over the death of her father, stunning and gaunt.  Painted very expressively, it is really moving.

We finished up the day by meeting up with my son Mike and his wife Elaine for a lovely dinner and went home to Sarah's flat exhausted!  A good day though.

Update

Ian Mitchell's talk on Friday evening 15th June at The Gallery, Ryedale Folk Museum was excellent and really well attended.  It continued on from his talk at Duckett and Jeffreys Gallery and developed the theme of his latest work.  A lively discussion ensued when Ian had finished ; some local people who turned up late and looked rather angry about the idea of a motorway from Thirsk to Whitby visibly relaxed as the discussion developed, as they realised that it was an artistic exploration of the idea and not a real proposal!



Sadly, my work at The Gallery has, for now, drawn to a close.

Unfinished Spring and Summer with finished Autumn and Winter

During the past two weeks I have been working hard to get things ready and framed for submissions to various open exhibitions.  I have finally completed the two paintings that have been causing me problems, Spring and Summer, of the Seasons quartet, plus some new drawing

Finished Spring and Summer

And some new drawings:

Some new canvases, same yellow pigment on different grounds

Last night I attended the inauguration of Jony Easterby's wonderful land art sculpture, Enclosure Rites, just off the Wolds Way between York and Scarborough.  Unfortunately, my camera battery ran out before I was able to take some good pics of the actual piece, but these photographs give a good idea of the atmosphere.  We processed up the hill to the site of the sculpture behind fiddlers fiddling, and adults and children in green men type masks.  The clouds parted, the sun came out and the light up there reflected off the dew pond, part of the work, was truly magical.  I am going to go back up there with camera (fully charged), sketch book and a picnic.

 

For really great pics of the whole installation, plus some info on the development of the piece, visit Jony;s web site:  www.jonyeasterby.co.uk   the piece is called:  Enclosure Rites 

Photographs of Ian Mitchell's talk: thanks to Pete Gough

All other images copyright Sue Gough

Ian Mitchell's Show Goes Up and New Drawings in the Studio

Last week, after spending 2 days dismantling and packing up the Nicholson exhibition, we spent the rest of the time hanging Ian Mitchell's show, A1(M) Eastern Gateway, in which he explores the idea of bulding a motorway from Thirsk to Whitby via Rosedale viaduct.  Ian has made works on a variety of substrates, the results of which are beautiful, playing on the differences between tough durable, modern surfaces and structures and the beauty of the landscape and ancient marks found on it.   Andy Dalton was around for most of the week, this is the final show he has worked on as gallery manager;  he has now left the museum and I miss him already.  Ian's show looks brilliant and we are all excited about this new development in his work.

 A few installation shots of Ian Mitchell's show, A1 (M) Eastern Gateway, which runs at The Gallery, Ryedale Folk Museum until 8th July.   http://easterngateway.blogspot.co.uk   and http://ianmitchellart.blogspot.co.uk

Ian is giving a talk at the gallery on June 15th, 7 - 8 pm.
www.thegalleryatryedalefolkmuseum.blogspot.com




I had been working on a drawing to give Andy as a gift for weeks but as usual the final touches were left to the last minute and I had to dash to finish it in my studio on the day of his leaving meal with colleagues from the museum. Andy has left to pursue his own printmaking and plans to set up a workshop in his garage.  I am looking forward to seeing some of the results.  www.andrew-dalton.com    He is a real star, so I drew him one:

Emerging Star, May 2012

I have only managed to work on a single drawing so far this week as there were a few things related to The Gallery that needed seeing to.  This drawing is on cheap cartridge paper, which has caused me much agony; the graphite sticks just don't slide over the surface in the same delicious way that they do on the Arches paper I used for some of the previous drawings.  It is also much much whiter and there is less tooth to the surface, which is not as pleasing.  So, to counteract this I have drawn the marks on the paper and with each layer, I have washed over the drawing with some matchpots of off white emulsion paint that I have kicking around the studio.  This created an interesting ghostly revealed/concealed look, which made me think of memories lost or half remembered.  I find the subtlety of the marks made by the brush with the emulsion over the graphite really pleasing and fascinating but I am wary of becoming sucked in by the beauty of the surface too much.  My dilemma now is: do I leave this drawing as it is, keeping it for reference, and make another that I will continue to work on beyond this stage, with the other, more calligraphic marks to create the obelisk/human forms?

 

Photographs of exhibition A1 (M) Eastern Gateway with permission of Ian Mitchell

All other images copyright Sue Gough

The Importance of Good Quality Photographs to Document Work

Pete and I went to The Gallery, Ryedale Folk Museum last weekend, to take some exhibition shots of the Nicholson show before it came down on Monday in preparation for hanging Ian Mitchell's show. They will be part of the ongoing archival record of exhibitions at The Gallery.  Professor Gordon Bell also requested a copy of them for his own records.  Pete took the photo's, I made sure the space was tidy and was on hand to approve the shots! 

We then drove to my studio, where Pete photographed my latest work so that I have some  really good quality for my archive.  These are invaluable as, should I choose to submit work for exhibitions, good photographs are essential.  I am lucky to have such a helpful husband because it would cost me a lot of money to hire a photographer to do this for me.  Pete takes several exposures of each work, (fewer for black and white as there is less adjustment required) and we then spend time with the downloaded images, selecting the best one and adjusting the colour balance until it resembles as exactly as possible, the original.  We have to have the original there with us to refer to while we go through this process, which, now that my studio is no longer at home, means a lot of lugging work backwards and forwards, but it is worth it.  For those of you reading this who are interested, the software Pete uses along with a Huey screen callibrator is Nikon's NX2 software because he has a Nikon camera, which does the same job as Photoshop.

Study, re-worked canvas

 

I visited Anthony Bentley of Ginger Hall Framing, Kirkbymoorside last week to discuss framing of some of my large drawings.  As usual, Anthony was really  helpful and interesting on the subject.  Now that the photo's are taken, I need to get them framed to protect them.  I envisage plain square frames, white or wood washed with white, with the drawings floated on a back paper or board, which will show the deckle edges of the paper off and present the drawings really well.

The Departed # 1

The Departed # 1V

I bubble wrap all my work for storage on the racks I have at home and a really helpful reference is to have a label on the outside of each package, which has an image of the work as well as the dimensions and any relevant information about it.  This makes it easier to select the correct image from a series that are all the same size without having to unwrap each one.  The good images can be viewed on screen by any interested parties, selected and found on the rack much more quickly by checking the label and may be unwrapped for closer inspection. 

 It is useful to document work as it progresses, which I do with my Lumix digital camera, many of which I put up on this blog but for the finished pieces, a good quality record is an important marketing tool.   Keeping an archive of high quality images of the work is vital, because, who knows, one day I may actually sell some and the original image will  no longer be around for me to look at.

These images are also useful when looking back at the development of the work and working process/practice, they may also provide a useful reference when developing new work.

All are images copyright of the artist

Working again at last!

The partition wall and the false walls at the back are complete, ready for me to cover in work!

Shelving and trestle table more or less in the right place, one more set of shelves to bring over.  Still got to bring my mangle and another old door that I use as a table top with trestles over from the house.

Apart from a few small gaps in the walls and around the doors to fill, the studio is finally ready and I have been able to continue my work.  I really like the space, the light will be ok during the summer months and I am going to get some more strip lights installed before the nights start to draw in again.  I have one calor gas stove in preparation for the cold months, but suspect I may need another.  The chickens are still nosy and come for a peer in if I leave the studio door open, and I never leave the boot of my car open because they seem to like hopping up inside for a root around.

Still, all in all I am happy to have the new space up and running, my working routine will soon settle down and I shall be able to concentrate properly again. 
Life does have a way of interrupting the flow though: this week I have several appointments that are going to disrupt things and next week I shall be in The Gallery, Ryedale Folk Museum all week taking down the Nicholson show and intalling Ian Mitchell's exciting new work.  Andy Dalton and I are really looking forward to seeing his work in the space; what we have seen so far is really good stuff.  Ian has taken the opportunity of the show to develop and push his ideas and working practice, which is what The Gallery is for.  Contemporary artists in this rural area need a space that provides them with support and encouragement to develop their ideas and take risks with new work. 
www.thegalleryatryedalefolkmuseum.blogspot.com

www.ianmitchellart.com


There are some potentially exciting developments for Ryedale ArtWorks in the offing, I am really looking forward to working with the team to see what we can achieve.  RAW is hoping to broaden it's horizons to provide more opportunities for exhibiting among other things, so these are exciting times and there will be lots to do.
www.ryedaleartworks.com

I have continued to experiment with the bottles with the metal tips that allow me to draw with the paint.  I have used an old canvas that was not successful for this; the paint I mixed is slightly thicker than the last lot and unfortunately it clogged.  I am not sure whether this is because I didn't mix it smoothly enough or if, because some of the paint is quite old, there may have been some skin that I caught up by mistake.  I shall have to take more care next time.  The clogging caused me to have to stop mid line, which entailed much loud swearing on my part; I just hope Sally Taylor, who is in the space above me was not in at the time!  The break in my line was frustrating, but when I looked at the work a day later, having gone over the work again to adjust the tonal value of the drawn area, it didn't actually matter.   

The tonal qualities of the drawings is an integral part of the image and meaning and contributes to the success of the work.  With the paintings this is much more difficult to achieve; I have found a way to draw with the paint that is quite successful but with paint comes a whole other set of things to consider.  Paint equals colour, which adds another dimension and distraction to expressing an idea.  Tonal qualities of paint are complicated by the colours selected, which affects the meaning/idea.  It is easy to create tonal contrast by using primaries or secondary colours, but I prefer the more sublte tertiaries.  I keep a rough record of the colours I mix in a sketch book and am constantly on the look out for interesting colour combinations when I am out and about in the landscape.  Light, especially stormy light creates a wonderfully expressive contrast of colour and tone.

I think this colour combination is a bit too obvious!

I am continuing to experiment with way to express the ideas of time passing and the human condition some of which are more successful than others.  I think the drawing with paint is a little "tight", I prefer more gestural use of paint but it has been a useful stage of the process.  I am looking forward to the continued struggle, finding a successful way to express time/seasons, loss and optimism.  One thing I do know; sometimes the simplest things are the best so I need to find ways to express things in an enigmatic way, to allude to the meaning and allow the paint to take over, to have less control.