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All you have to do is email me at:
hello@claireleggett.co.uk
and I’ll add you to the list. You’ll be in the draw to win a mini original painting 🖼 on Jan 9th 2023😄
Thank you to all who bought a piece of art and made my studio sale a great success. As it’s been so well received I’ve decided to round up the remaining pieces in a blog post and link it to my website under the Paintings heading should anyone have missed the sale week and want to look in the future.
I’m having a big studio clear out – there are loads of pieces -still life, landscape, florals, teacups etc at really good prices for one week only:
What to do: please scroll down and have a look through.
Please email me:
hello@claireleggett.co.uk saying what you want to buy and I will send payment details to you – first contact and payment = first served= sold.
Standard letter postage within the UK is included. Larger pieces which have to go by small package post have a £3 postage contribution added.
Please email for postage quotes outside the UK or if you choose to upgrade the postage to tracked/ins (in or out of the UK) and I will send you a postage quote.
Most photos show the whole paper size (inc the brown tape I use to stretch the paper prior to painting) so that you can see what additional space there is for framing.
Sizes given are for the whole framable size of the paper – some paintings are placed within a bigger sized piece of paper which you can cut into to frame – I have given the largest sizes.
All pieces will be mailed out on Saturday 25th July.
In no particular order of size or price….
I will have been a self-employed artist for 8 years once Sept rolls around. 8 YEARS! Where does the time go? In that time I’ve made A LOT of paintings. Right now I’m in the mood to make some space and sell them off at great prices. Sale starts tomorrow 5pm GMT – details to follow tomorrow.
Today marks the beginning of week 2 of COVID quarantine. Not only has a lot happened since I last blogged 6 months ago but an enormous, life-shifting change has taken place in the last 7/10 days due to the virus we are suffering from worldwide.
Government enforced home-stay and the cancellation and postponement of all my freelance work sent me spinning at first and my Artist in Residence exhibition (planned for the end of May) is now up in the air date-wise.
I threw myself into the cathartic activity of sorting and cleaning my studio (which is at home) and that activity has helped me to calm myself and prepare to embrace a new chapter instead. It’s been a major week-long purge of Stuff, organising projects half started which still want to be finished and ridding my workspace of what no longer serves or inspires. The space can breathe again and so can I.
There is a collective feeling that the enforced slowing down is beneficial and I can feel that personally. It’s causing all-sorts of reflection – the first being to breathe life back into this neglected space.
On Saturday 18th May 2019 The Tutors Exhibition – at macbirmingham opens and in it will be one of my pattern design pieces and products – would you like to hear the story of how it came about?
I recently watched The Creative Brain on Netflix, which advocated the importance of open-ended play for creativity to blossom and this, is very much a story of that process too.
It all began with a painting I did one afternoon where I textured up a piece of watercolour paper with a lovely deckled edge and then overlaid white paint leaving the negative space to describe birds flying. And that was it – that piece of creativity sparked something else and off I went down that rabbit hole leaving this painting in the plan-chest drawer for a few months.
Then by a series of serendipitous events I found myself a member of the wonderful SteamhouseUK community where I get to play about with the most amazing array of machines and learn techniques and processes that have been invented since I was last in college.
Sublimation printing (or dye sublimation printing as it is sometimes also known) is the process of transferring images onto a fabric (or other substrate) using a heat-press to print the image. At macbirmingham we have a heat-press and we use disperse dyes to paint and print onto paper which can then be heat-pressed onto fabric (if you think that sounds fun come along to my Tues afternoon class and have a go!)
But I had never hoped to ever have access to using an actual Sublimation printer until now! In this case the disperse dyes are in the printer ink cartridges and the computer sends your image to print onto heat resistant paper in wide format.
At Steamhouse the heat-press can print onto fabric up to 175cm in width. The heat-press technique is also great for capturing textures in designs onto fabric. The Tutors show was coming up. All this got me thinking what could I make with the size of fabric that I could print to exhibit for the show?
One morning I woke up with the answer ringing clearly in my mind and it didn’t take long to make it a reality – I’m single-minded like that sometimes – use the Swifts painting to make a pattern and construct a kimono!
The pattern had to be cut down the back and re-seamed in order for all the pieces to fit one at a time into the heat-press for printing and the Swifts pattern was easy enough to put into technical repeat using Photoshop so that I could use the sublimation printer to print an all over repeating pattern.
After that it was a steady job to sew it all together nicely including a partial lining so it looked good hanging up for exhibition.
If you’re local and can make it to MAC to see the show ( – Tues – Sun, 11am – 5pm, First Floor Gallery) you’ll see that kimono hanging on the wall and who knows, after the exhibition is over I may even wear it 😉
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
One of my favourite ways to work is with a gelatin plate for mono-printing.
The process itself is messy-fun and the result, although not always what you expected to get, is always something interesting and useable.
When we’d been to Amsterdam a few years back, I did a lots of gelatin plate printing of the cute houses found there.
You can make effective stencils by cutting photographs directly – the gloss coated paper is great for this kind of printing.
I like to sew and applique into these prints to add details, further colour and visual texture and interest. But you can print effectively onto paper or fabric and they are a great source for any printmaker, scrapbooker or artist who might like to print and use texture, pattern or imagery to paint with, collage with or work further into with textile treatments.
If that’s got your interest and you’re within reach of MAC Birmingham then I am running a gelatin plate printing class on Thursday June 21st – tickets here.
If not then have a ‘google’ and give it a go – it’s a lot of fun 🙂
Did you notice I’d spruced up the website? New, fresh work samples in the portfolios, updated text and more representational photos of me…i.e. older looking!
As any sole trader will tell you, there’s a gazzillion things one could do with every hour of working time and for me the thing that slips is the website maintenance. But it’s been worth all the slog as I think it looks great and just like any good clear up (once it’s done) its been cathartic and satisfying.
Hope you enjoy it too.
Paint Drops Keep Falling 