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Sunnybank Mills Gallery

Dropped off new pieces of work yesterday at Sunnybank Mills Art Gallery in Leeds, it’s a great gallery and full of lovely gifts in the shop. There’s also a fantastic exhibition called the Potential of Pattern with some stunning contemporary art, textiles and sculpture.

My work will be in the gallery shop I have woodcut prints and some of my Back of the envelope pieces, which are fine art original hand drawn artworks on preloved paper…it’s a Preloved Paper Project People!

These drawings are hand drawn in my Manchester and Salford Based studios, my main working space upstairs at Hotbed Press in Salford and my home studio …at home in Manchester. Hotbed Press is a traditional printmaking studio and my art studio is a space above that, freezing cold in a victorian draughty space. Hotbed press the printmakers below is currently closed due to Covid19 restrictions and only open for educational purposes, hence me mostly working from my home studio it’s a messy business.

Gallery

All manner of things

Over the past few months I have been drawing all manner of things, things that seem poignant at the time, a buttercup, a patch of grass, a chair and memories. Connected to whatever I’m mulling over sometimes just trying to create a feeling through drawing.

Isolation as a huge effect on the brain and nervous system, I’m not saying anything new here I’m not that cut off, I still have to go out to do the school drop off, shopping, mainly working from home but I think lack of interaction is not having an enormously positive affect on me, but we have to do it.

As part of my work it’s important to connect through social media and post things about my work but I feel such a sense of anxiety about it that it’s very difficult at times to do it. So this week I’m trying to ignore my own uncertainty and make a few posts …I wonder if I would’ve been better at actually writing letters and putting them in the post I doubt it, they probably would’ve just ended up discarded in a bag somewhere.

The small works below are created for my Covid19 commission for Salford University Art Collection they’re not finished in these photographs they’re more complete now I’ve added colours using transfer techniques

multiple

Sometimes larger pieces of work are made from multiple envelopes and bits of this and that, large collages with hand drawing maybe some print and use of thread. I have been meaning to photograph some of these works for sometime to share on my blog

These images are of a large piece of work made from ripped ephemera including old bank envelopes this is a drawing in pen with collage size

The piece above is called Moths and depicts moths flying towards a lightbulb and ricocheting away, it’s made from old banking envelopes folded and some of them have print or drawing on, I’ve also used stitch in a rather chaotic way, I thought this suits the furtive scribbly nature of moths.

Some of the images above are from my Covid19 commission for Salford University Collections I’ve done so many drawings for this, finding inspiration as I go along and consequently sometimes changing my path at times I feel inspired but at other times I feel I just don’t when to stop!

Below is a drawing of a Murmuration on three envelopes as one piece of work, a Triptych. This is an ink drawing repetitively drawing birds over and over again

Below is a large collage called Joy this shows magpies in a nest made from ephemera with hand drawing and stitching

  • Two for Joy
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The chairs we sat in.

Looking for a starting point, thinking how I could convey quiet absence through drawing and also while having limited resources myself, in isolation, I started to draw empty chairs. Office chair, school chair, park bench and bar stools were replaced by settee, three piece suite and arm chair.

An empty chair can also be a poignant reminder of person no longer with us.

At the beginning of the pandemic there were some difficult times and great uncertainty, there still are, but now there is some normality coming back into the everyday goings on, for society as a whole, shops opening, some children going back to school, some work resuming and non emergency medical appointments and some people have lost people they love.

Repeat repeat repeat

Working on a series of editions at Hotbed Press. One off mono screen- prints, the results are experimental and inspired by my drawings.

Printing a few small marks over and over again to see what happens, each screen-print will (eventually) have an unruly shape on it, achieved by repeat printing, turning the screen slightly each time I print so the marks are misaligned.

The marks are taken from the envelope drawings below created for Salford Museum Art collection Covid19 Commisions the drawing shows stats flying above an empty street.

#Uosartcollection #hotbedpress

Working in the studio

#UOSartcollection #hotbedpress

The commission for Salford Museum Art collection continues I’m experimenting with a number of techniques and particularly wondering about how to display works with multiple envelopes.

The pictures show the brambles I was drawing earlier, leaves added using screen-printing techniques, the shapes are painted, transferred to the screen and then applied to the drawings, this can be tricky business, everything could go terribly wrong destroying hours and hours of drawing or it might work out.

Best Slide Ever

Best Slide Ever … Shut Down is a piece of work I created as part of my Covid19 commission for Hotbed Press and Salford University and Art Gallery Art collections.

It shows a Helter Skelter slide surrounded by fences with a small selection of onlookers and photographers to show the sense of occasion this fabulous slide that no one can go on.

The Slide is made from Airmail envelopes, the figures are hand drawn and the fencing uses screen printing techniques to apply colour.

#UOSartcollection #hotbedpress

Best Slide Ever… Shut down
https://artcollection.salford.ac.uk/collection/

works in progress

University Of Salford Covid19 Commissions

Following a few lines of enquiry, the shapes and unruly nature of brambles interest me, so I’m doing a few drawings with chaotic seemingly never- ending scribbles that brambles make. I’m also looking at people human faces and bodies, doing stuff like smoking, drinking coffee being bored etc. unfinished ideas and drawings. @uos_artcollection

Studies of nature

Capturing images of nature and leaving space around drawing using negative space to create a feeling of quiet and to show off the mis-shaped used ripped paper, float mounted so the envelopes are hovering beneath the glass, like objects or artefacts in a museum something collected from the past.