Here is a sneak preview mosaic of my new work that will be displayed at The First Gallery, Bitterne in Southampton. The show starts on November 11th. Further details coming soon!

You can see the full photos by going to my flickr stream. I am also on Twitter now and you can follow me here!

Not sure where to start now – washing up? hoovering? ironing? Cup of tea…

I have no excuses for not writing on my blog over the summer other than it was summer and summer can be distracting even without the sun. So it is now officially Autumn as the heating came on today and on my walk this morning I even felt the chill on my fingers that made me think ‘gloves!’

Work wise, things are developing…I have been working on two projects and despite neglecting my writing, I have not neglected my sewing. A couple of weeks ago I went to Portland, Oregon where I found lots of beautiful wools or yarns, filled a suitcase with really bright organza, and visited some excellent exhibitions. I came across an artist called ‘Wolf Kahn’ whose book I found in a bookshop. He is described as a ‘colourist’ which weirdly I hadn’t heard of before (you’d think that would have come up at some point in my art career! Must have missed that lesson…) Anyway the definition of a colourist is “Colourist painting is characterised by the use of intense colour, which becomes the dominant feature of the resultant work of art, more important than its other qualities.” (from here). I quite like that description.

Wolf Kahn.

One of my projects is my ongoing ‘Walking Stitch’ project. I am walking The Solent Way (in stages) and making pieces based on my walk. Here are a few pieces I have been working on. They are not finished just yet.

I think I am changing direction and going slightly bolder with the colours and composition. Layering the felt is interesting and using organza to create quite lush and interesting shapes along the edges is fascinating me at the moment. The other project I am working on is related to the news but this will have to wait as I need to take more photos and I’ll be setting up a separate blog for it. I will try not to leave it so long next time.

I was unable to spend the day on my art yesterday so this morning I am raring to go…but thought I would post a couple of pictures of up of what I have done so far this morning…back later…

Hello again! I have been quite the busy little artist today and have come to conclusion that I am: impatient to complete work; easily distracted by other colours and ideas; and have lots of pictures in my head that I want to create (and all today if possible!).

I have recently started making and using design boards instead of putting all of bits and pieces into a sketchbook. I love sketchbooks but find that I don’t like to close my ideas away in them so the design boards work well as I pin them up on the studio wall and move them around if I need to.

This is a design board that I have been working on today, but as usual it is not related to the particular area of The Solent Way that I was supposed to be looking at, but instead lends itself to the Hythe and Fawley area of the walk. The Solent Way is a 60 mile walk that I am doing (gradually at my leisure!) and basing my current work on. The fact that I got distracted is fine – I think all the images in my head are mixed into one at the moment so all I am doing is letting them out in the order they want to!

I have also been working on the large blue and yellow piece that I made a couple of weeks ago. I decided to cut it up in the end as the smaller sections have simpler compositions and more space in them. Here is what I have been working on so far. I realised that I haven’t machine stitched onto felt for ages as I have been hand stitching instead. I was a little bit hesitant getting started and have been quite minimal with the stitch but didn’t want to overdo it.

I’ve had fun blending colours today and because it’s been such a lovely day, the prefelts that I made this morning dried very quickly and so I have even managed to make a piece of felt too! My hands are lovely and soft and smell like Olivia soap and all in all it’s been a productive day. Although I was supposed to be looking at my other piece and working from that, I got a bit distracted and ended up using a completely different colour scheme. Tomorrow, I will take a look again at the felt I made a couple of weeks ago and decide what to do with it. This one though, I am pleased with and already have an idea of what will be stitched into it. I still need to work at creating space within the composition and think I will make this a target for the coming weeks work. I also need to concentrate on my subject this week which is the stretch of land between Milford-on-Sea and Lymington.

Thinking of space within painting / textile work I always refer back to Rothko and another of my favourite painters, Barbara Rae. Rothko has been a favourite painter of mine since I was at art college – it’s the colour and the scale of the pieces that I love, and also the detail between the colours – the line where the two colours meet.

I find that felt can be just as luscious where the edge of one colour slightly bleeds into the edge of another, or if there is a darker or lighter colour on the underside of the felt – it can seep through to the surface.  This piece might benefit from a horizontal chop straight through the middle to simplify it, so that the eye is drawn more to the red, rather than the dominating dark blue marks. Part of my fascination with the sea is the horizon line. I could look at it all day!  I think that is another reason I like Rothko’s work - there are lots of horizontal lines. Barbara Rae, however is much more detailed and busy than Rothko.

In the piece above which is titled ‘Ceide’, which is a screen print, Rae uses a beautiful bright cerise with horizontal green and yellow lines to stand out from the darker blues. The horizontal lines of the green and yellows are the focal point of the piece but because they run in the same direction as the dark blue, your eye follows the shapes into the distance which in itself gives the image a sense of depth. Looking forward to tomorrow…

I am quite pleased with the fluidity of this piece although still need to practice painting depth. Yellow is a favourite colour in my work at the moment and mixing it with grey is helpful to get the different tones. From this painting I made a piece of felt, using the colours but without trying to replicate it. Looking at them both together now I see that I need more shades of green in the felt and less of the blue. I also think that I have added too much into the felt and my next piece will be simpler.

I find that by taking photos of compositions within the piece gives me further ideas. I like the simplicity in this composition.

I have been thinking about creativity and playfulness whilst I have been felting this morning. Do you remember as a child that feeling of being completely wrapped up in play? The scratchy feeling of the (pink) carpet on your skin, Barbie clothes and tiny shoes everywhere as Ken swiftly comes to rescue Barbie from impending doom…? Nothing else mattered apart from the story; teatime, bath time, bed time were all just interruptions to playtime. I get this feeling in the garden at the moment – food can wait, the hours feel like minutes and I am a very happy bunny when in the garden! However I do actually have to do some work as well and can just as easily get absorbed in making felt and stitching but I find that I have to give myself permission to play and allow myself to take risks and make mistakes. It’s ok – I tell myself as I cut up my felt again and piece it back together!

Heartfelt Etc Article PDF