Hello everyone and I do hope you are keeping well. This week has been another very busy one and I had hoped to share new sketchbook pages and ideas for artist books - but I can’t magic extra hours out of scraps of time, try as I might!
And so, I have just the one set of sketchbook pages to show you - but also some looking back to share.
Recent sketchbook pages - I made these as quick, end of day pages - then needed that bright yellow for the child’s coat - so not sticking to my rule completely (only using what is left on my painting plate). But the yellow works, I feel.
I have been thinking over the ideas I wish to explore, book-wise, in my artwork during the months ahead. The concertina - a simple folding page that may be as wide as you like - is a book form that has fascinated me in its simplicity and possible conundrums for many years. I have been looking back through my old Flickr photos to see what I can see. Often I look back to think forward, picking up a few ideas and reinventing. Here are some of the concertina works I have made over the years, just some of the many. Some of the photo quality is not that great, sorry. A combination of low light and modest technology!
Courtesans - A concertina book from 2013. I like the soft colours and pattern, the disorientation or faces within abstract spaces.
Healing Land - from 2017. Again, the soft colours surprise me especially as this was made in the January of the year and I am usually more concerned with rich tones or monochrome. I like the sense of movement.
figure studies - a concertina from 2018 - again a sense of movement but this time a different combination of media. I have used monoprint drawings and abstract stitch drawings. This is a combo I come back to every so often and will explore again, no doubt.
Concertina from 2015 - improvised drawings in gouache on paper - exploring the power of simple lines and layering, ways of revealing a figure’s persona without anything more. I do enjoy this direct, chance approach to drawing.
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As I was looking back over my older work I saw this recent comment left by someone on my Flickr account.
Your paintings and embroideries are very beautiful, strange, poetic and deeply rooted in the past, like fragments of a lost tradition of British folk art. And they are instantly recognisable as your own - you have a unique and unmistakable style and for me that is perhaps the main hallmark of a true artist.
Comments like this are so encouraging and I must remember words like these when I am having moments of doubt or angst (as we all do, I suppose). More than anything I am grateful to people who take the time to look at my work, to spend time with it.
Thank you.
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Shop News: I will be adding a new group of tiny paintings to my shop today, Sunday 14th Jan at 7pm UK time. Over the coming weeks I will vary what I offer each Sunday - it won’t always be tiny paintings - but for now it is!
This coming Wednesday I will add new stitch pieces to my shop - I expect this week will be mostly brooches. I may include some of my hand stitched wool brooches alongside the machine embroidery portraits. (If not this week, then soon). This stitch update will be at the usual time for a Wednesday - 8pm UK time.
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Photo: one more from the archives - a mixed media concertina from the end of December 2018 - I do enjoy working with these rich colours, layering up with fabric on paper, layers of ideas - what looks quite simple is actually a story of revising and discovery. Again, I enjoy working in this way.
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A few Small Stories
Don’t tell me Trevor, don’t tell me how to make a sandwich! A woman in a thick woolly coat declares. The couple are walking over the cobbled yard toward the supermarket and I am just behind, unable to avoid their conversation. It is a cold evening and the woman is huffing steamy breaths, whilst the man seems bemused. I am telling you, Trevor says, the first rule of catering - Bill told me and he knows. The woman shrugs and walks ahead. The man calls out: if you cut a sandwich diagonally it looks bigger and if you cut it across to make it a rectangle it looks smaller! The woman turns and glares. You are having me on! She turns again and, now outside the supermarket, grabs a metal basket - but it’s tangled with others and she fights it with one hand. The man helps out. Don’t tell me how to make a sandwich Trevor! The woman says and laughs, giving Trevor a dark-eyed glare.
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In the park, an older couple, morose in beige, are walking their little beige dog. The dog wears a chunky knitted coat, but for all his charming attire seems quite downcast. He stops to inspect a large lichen-covered stick but cannot be asked to pick it up. The dog’s male owner, a ruddy faced gentleman, is wearing a knitted hat: oddments of greys and beige with a bobble that does not seem appropriate. The woman has elegant long knitted gloves and is the less unhappy of the three, and I wonder if she is the knitter. Perhaps she has her mind on knitting as soon as they get home following this blustery, dull walk.
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My son and I walk uphill, in the blustery cold. The park is surprisingly busy with people getting out for a walk regardless of the chill. It proves you are hardy and determined, I suppose, being out here in most weathers. But I can feel my nose becoming redder with the cold. All through the winter months I have the nose of a jolly old lady that likes a drop of port. Oh, a drop of port, I suddenly think about its warming properties though I have not tasted it in years. Port and lemon used to be the drink of a lady of a certain age. And I am now just about there, age-wise. I look at my son, with his sensible hood keeping his face warm. He is watching a dog, anxious it does not come too close to us. Instead, the dog is more interested in a large branch that has fallen across the path. As if he’s been training all his young life for this, the dog takes the hefty branch in its small jaw and sprints across the grass. Oh to be young, I say, wistfully. You are young, young-ish my son says and kisses me on the cheek. Your nose is very red, he says. Yes, it will be until about May, I say.
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Thank you so much for reading here, for your kind comments and for liking this post - if you enjoyed it. Thanks to everyone who has bought me a coffee recently, so very much appreciated!
I just love your little stories at the end of these. I often wish you'd illustrate them in your own way. Thank you for sharing them with us.
Lovely stories Cathy! (Especially the elegantly attired knitter) I know exactly what you mean about scraps of time! And I'm so lucky to have one of your early concertina books. They are precious. Trying to be better at keeping up with good friends. Happy New Year! x