Fashion...

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved

Off the gallery wall and onto your jacket or cardigan. Hand painted wearable art badges & brooches! £15 and free shipping. Message or comment to reserve yours. I am offering them to my fb and blog reading friends this weekend before I list them on Etsy on Monday.




Beep Beep!

Exciting gallery news!

This week seemed long and productive. Firstly, nineteen more Isolated Moments were brought into the world, documented, and listed in my Etsy shop, Art Maven. I am happy to report there were several sales too. Thank you, patrons, for supporting my work! Here are five of my current available favorites. Please visit my Etsy shop to see more and make your purchases.

To learn more about these pieces you can view my weekly Facebook Tuesday studio visit video, where I go into detail about my process.

This week, I also started painting a wearable collection of modern art scarves. These scarves are hand picked by me for their color and tactile qualities. I am choosing synthetic fabrics to the best of my knowledge as to not use silk so that they will be vegan-friendly. Also to contribute to the circular economy, and in order to be more environmentally friendly, the scarves are sourced from local charity shops. I then paint them in my studio. It's the early days yet and I hope to complete ten of them to see how they are received. I hope to produce a line of abstract brooches soon as well. It has been a fun and active time in the studio.

And yes, I really will get back to my canvas Resilience Series paintings soon! Which leads me to the next big item!

Last but certainly not least, I am delighted to share that I now have work in The Velvet Easel Gallery in Portobello, Edinburgh. It is one of my favourite galleries and I am chuffed to bits to have my work included in the current exhibition, Portobello Mon Amour. If you are in the area please stop by the gallery. You can find them on facebook too. The gallery has three pieces from my New Language series, including the title piece as seen here on the right side of the gallery window. It is wonderful to be in such good company.

Photo credit: Rosalind Walker, The Velvet Easel Gallery
All rights reserved 2017

I think that is all I have for you this week. I am knackered! Until next week, keep fighting. Keep speaking out, calling your elected officials, signing petitions, showing up at rallies, vote with your pounds and dollars every day. Support the things you love, look for the helpers in this world and be one when you can. It's up to us.

Music fuels my art: PJ Harvey

I saw the best concert I have ever seen in my life this past Tuesday as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Less than a mile from the flat, we were able to walk up to The Edinburgh Playhouse to see PJ Harvey perform with her band on their Hope Six Demolition Project tour. I have been a fan of Polly Jean Harvey for years but have never had the opportunity to see her in person. 

I have been very fortunate to see many amazing bands and artists starting at a relatively young age - thanks to my older brother Sean's influence (my even older brother Ben influenced me musically as well, but was already away from home by the time I was going to gigs). Anyway, I digress. 

Basically, I have seen my fair share of great bands. However, PJ Harvey made me cry. I have never totally understood those videos showing the girls crying and going crazy for the Beatles but now I think I do. This was just the perfect show. 

This might have been the first show I wore my middle aged glasses to and I was so glad I did. I kept my eyes peeled, glued to the stage, forgetting to blink. I also sometimes forgot to breathe and when I remembered, they were deep breaths - to breathe in the whole experience. I sat in my seat in rapt attention, aware that I was seeing a true and commanding artist.

The set design was minimal, the lighting ethereal, the band was tight and perfectly theatrical and were equals with PJ and her powerful voice and gestures. She said no words between songs, a tight ship. The show started just after 8pm and was over by 9:30. She played 18 songs (16 making the perfect set and then a two song encore). These songs were expertly curated heavily from her previous two albums (Hope Six Demolition Project and Let England Shake) and a dash here and there of some her best older tunes (50ft Queenie was a raucous surprise from her album Rid of Me). There were also two of my favourites from White Chalk as well as two from To Bring You My Love. She played tracks from Is This Desire? and Uh Huh Her as well. The songs fitted together into the perfect summation of her impressive career to this point. As an artist, she seems to only get better and that was thrilling and inspiring to watch.

Tears rolled from my eyes and under my glasses as a smile crept across my face with every drum beat, heavy sax, and perfect guitar drone as PJ directed us through her dark and majestic music with gestures and voice cutting through the air, her face aglow in the silvery light. For that hour and thirty minutes, I disappeared "into the ether, one world to the next."

Everything I ever meant to say

I don't want to tell you about the hum drum of my studio life or how many paintings I have or have not completed or how much I have cleaned this week. By the way, I did hoover the place this morning and I ate soup in my makeshift studio luncheonette for the second day in a row. And I am sure that the cafe at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall actually puts love into their soup and because of this, it is the best soup in all of Edinburgh or certainly Leith.

What I want to write about is the flicker at my finger tips and the spark at the back of my brain that always comes from an upheaval or dissatisfaction and then is channeled into the dream world that I like best. You don't have to understand this or make sense of it. All I know is that when this place inside switches on, I am able to see things more clearly and honestly. I love the vulnerability and art that comes from this place. I love the nest building and escaping involved. A perfect storm makes the perfect nest of desperate creativity.

I know when I am approaching this place. I might be on the verge of tears, I might be more ridiculous than usual and the music might seem even sweeter. My self-censorship shield is delightfully lowered.

Francis Bacon once said, "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery" and I agree. I think it is also our job to follow and cultivate the mystery- to simply allow the mystery.

At times, I have overlooked the mystery, been afraid of it and wanted so much for it to go away so I could be "normal." I have tried my whole life to fit into social groups, social norms, social expectations, relationships, and jobs. I don't ever fit into those very well or for very long and damn if I haven't tried.

So at 45, yet again I surrender to the mystery. I surrender to found furniture that always finds me on the streets and perfect bowls of soup. I surrender to the person that finds my work and gloriously understands it the first moment they see it. I surrender to the perfect song on repeat and the best tube of Payne's grey and the way paper gets so yellow and brittle and the wonderful sound it makes and how I like dirty, broken down art. I surrender to being alone as I experience these things and that you will never know the feeling in my brain when it fires that sweet spark.

Everything I ever meant to say. Ten new works on paper.