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Just popping in with a few catch-up pieces from my residency at Winterbourne House and Garden.
It’s been hard to catch a good time to be out painting because of the sudden changes in weather and temperature. One solution has been to work in miniature, although these paintings still take quite a time.
Everything is growing very fast and I’m trying my best to catch a little bit of it all as there’s no way I can do all of it justice. The Auriculas have long been a favourite of mine so it was nice to capture them.
This little guy had to be caught on canvas having visited me whilst sketching one day and had a good long proper chat and even hopped around the side of me as if to see what I was doing.
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Still catching up my blog – back in January I re-introduced myself on Instagram after realising that even my old friends weren’t really sure what I do day-to-day. So here it is for any of you who’d like to know too 😉
Hi friends, family and followers HNY! 🍾
I met an old friend who’d I’d lost touch with and it made me realise that these pictures here don’t fully describe my Work Life and so I’m starting a fresh year with one of those little Insta intro’s people do….
28 years ago I graduated in Textile Design specialising in Printed Textiles.
26 years ago I got my teaching qualification and began teaching Primary-aged kids with a specialism in kids with Additional Needs.
7 years ago I stepped out of the school classroom and into other places and spaces where I can teach people, work with kids and develop my own art practice.
👩🏻🎨 I’m an artist at heart and I love to paint. And print. And add colour to things. And meet people and share art and creativity and the good it brings.
📆I hardly have a typical week (which I love) but it might look like this:
🖼 I spend some of my time painting pictures to sell and until May 2020 I have the whole of Winterbourne House and Gardens @winterbournehg to inspire me as I am Artist in Residence there @artist_winterbournehg come and follow that account too if you like!
🌳🏢I work regularly @macbirmingham teaching Mixed Media Textiles on a Thurs night, Pattern-design/Screen-printing and Heat Transfer-printing on a Tues afternoon, running a Baby Creative class (messy/sensory play) and also the cutest Toddler Art Group. 👬👭
Then there’s work that comes in blocks such as delivering a whole range of multi-disciplinary workshops locally at places like @birmingham_mag and @winterbournehg for adults and children, working with local and national social enterprise groups developing skills with a group of refugees and offering paint-therapy for ShelterUK and I also take workshops and demonstrations on the road to art groups as far as my travelling time can take me.
🤫I design patterns commercially using any number of ways; print methods, stitch and all sorts of paint techniques and a local print agent takes them out to the textile fairs to sell them on my behalf. It’s secret work (copyright issues) and not often seen here.
📺 And of a night I still knit, weave, stitch and crochet in front of the telly because I love to.
Thank you for reading if you got this far x
I thought I’d just pop in today and update my blog on my first three weeks of residency at the University of Birmingham Winterbourne House and Gardens.
I have been blessed with great weather and tried to make the most of it by painting outside as much as possible.
I have a room on site to call my studio and it leads out onto a flat roof with a magnificent birds-eye view of the walled garden (you can see where in this photo below)
I threw myself in lock, stock and barrel with a huge painting which is taking many hours and many layers to bring to fruition. I find there is a magic to painting outside ‘en plein air’ – the way I perceive colours in the daylight is brighter and more vibrant and I can see other colours in the shadows as the light changes during the day. However good a photograph is it doesn’t beat reading real colours and textures from an actual scene in front of you.
That said I’m not a massive fan of painting at an easel, preferring a desk, and I feel that this piece is about ready for a finial bout of finish which I find easier to achieve at home in the studio on a table.
This was the first piece I finished – the Urban Veg Plot – started above on site and finished from photos. There is so much inspiration around I can barely keep up with all I want to do!
If you like, follow along in real-time on my Artist in Residence Instagram page – click here -where I post more regularly.
