Salford Museum

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

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.

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.