a glimpse into an artist's studio

Many people are curious about how an artist's studio looks. I also enjoy visiting my friends' studios and seeing how differently we all work. Obviously so much depends on the personality of each artist and the available space. The ones I can never get over are the tiny immaculate ones, which are so foreign to my somewhat (OK, very) messy way of working. Strangely enough, although I am a complete dirtbag, who splashes paint around liberally, I always have to start each bout of painting with a relatively tidy workspace. This is the studio during this week's tidy up.

just sold one of my favourite works

We lose them, they expand: oil on canvas 1000x1000mm (SOLD)

Another sale through SouthAfricanArtists.com. I have mentioned before what a pleasure they are to deal with.... this painting is one of those that just flows from you as it goes along, almost with a mind of its own, and I am quite attached to it... it is a very emotional and political work. Off to Pretoria tomorrow.

elusive Baobab photo

In a recent post I spoke about my love for baobab trees and mentioned one that is on the side of the main road to Zimbabwe, just outside Musina, that must have fallen over at some point, and just continued growing along the ground. After turning the house upside down, I have still not found the actual photo I am looking for, but my daughter came across another one of the tree, taken on one of our family holidays, around the late 1980s.

two small works in very different styles

Tree of Life: oil, conte and collage on canvas 250x300mm

The obsession with baobab trees and lost children continues :)

Rainy Day - Galata Bridge: oil on board 250x250mm

I am having a love affair ... don't worry my husband knows about it... I am crazy about the City of Istanbul!

I am reading everything I can find to feed the passion (look for Orhan Pamuk if you want to read some great Turkish literature that truly captures the essence of the place) and have been going through my photos converting some into moody black and white shots. These will be the basis for a new series of small works. This one was done with thin glazes on board as the technique allows for a monochrome look but with a buildup of subtle colours.

Sometimes it is harder to name a work than to paint it!

.... this is a case in point.... the social conscience type works are easy for me because I already know the emotion or message I want them to convey, but I find ones like this seem so difficult ... the descriptive names seem a bit lame... trees, forest, waterfall. Moods might be a bit twee... serenity, the awesomness of nature etc... so, any suggestions?

sentinals.  mixed media on canvas. 1200x900mm

(PS. thanks to my facebook friends who came up with some good suggestions, I particularly liked Esme Goosen's idea and have called it "sentinals")

Generating Images

One of the great things about the Greg Kerr workshops I have been attending is the homework.... I know, homework is usually a drag, right? But he sets such great projects that it really is fun, at the same time as enlightening. I have already mentioned the little book of tiny charcoal drawings that featured in the previous "dark cloud" workshop. And I posted the two triptychs of large charcoal drawings. What I haven't done yet is tell you how the source material, on which the drawings were based, was arrived at.

We had to make a little theatre from a cardboard box and furnish it with some prescribed items and some flats made from photos. Then we had to play around with lighting the whole thing dramatically and take black and white photos of the result. This provided a bunch of suitable material to use as a basis for some drawings and paintings.
















It made for some great moody material to base the drawings on.

The latest workshop is called "the dinner party", and the whole program is based on the idea of hosting an imaginary dinner party at which there are 6 people (5 guests plus me as host). We began by researching  the guests and generating images that would express who they are (were if they are historic characters). My guests are Peter Clarke, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Kevin Carter, JWM Turner and Sam Nhlengethwa. I chose all because over the years I have admired their work, and it has been fab digging into their biographies and getting to know them better as people. In the case of Peter Clarke, I really did get to know him, as he very kindly invited me to tea the last time I was in Cape Town, and we spent a delightful afternoon together chatting like old friends, he is a really humble and inspiring man with a naughty twinkle in his eye and a great sense of humour.

Our first task was to make valentines cards for each guest and ourselves. Here they are:



Charles Rennie Mackintosh



JWM Turner



Kevin Carter



Sam Nhlengethwa



Sue Hoppe



Peter Clarke

From these we did a series of small paintings as tributes to each guest, which are not yet finished, as we'll be tackling them again later in the process, but this is how far they are for now:

Charles rennie mackintosh tribute

Kevin Carter tribute

Peter Clarke

Sam Nhlengethwa tribute

Sue Hoppe tribute

Turner tribute

Next we will do a large format painting of all the guests at the dinner table and as part of the process of generating images for the large painting, we again had some great homework. This time we have to make little clay figures and arrange them in different ways around a table, and again do a series of monochrome photos.

Here are some of the results:

Looks like we are in for a fun year!

ooops, nearly forgot these little guys

These two small canvases were done for the recent Same Size Same Price No Signature held at artEC Gallery, both sold on the opening night.

Lost generation 5 300x300 oil on canvas

Lost generation 6 300x300 oil on canvas