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.

Back of the envelope

Back of the envelope:- a phrase meaning to calculate and work things out. It is inferred that our light bulb moments come from rough doodles on a throw away scrap of paper, when doodling on a piece of paper of no value your mind is free to do your best work.

Drawing on envelopes to repurpose paper that has touched our lives but has then been discarded and forgotten, but not always entirely some stored beneath floorboards, in disorderly piles on shelves and crammed into the back of cabinets, by strange people like me who can’t throw things away.

Attaching importance to inanimate objects is something that all human beings do, the question is what are the important ‘things’  it is inevitable that things become throwaway eventually. With a thrifty temperament and collector’s disposition it’s natural to amass great piles of envelopes and begin a journey to scribble, squiggle and sketch onto an old envelope.

Patterns and plush velour sofa, chair, settee or a three piece suite… sofa so good or a blustery bus stop. Pictures observing pause a moment to reflect, a temporary stop, reset your batteries.