News

The dates for this year’s Wylye Valley are Saturday 23rd May until Sunday 31st May.  Once again I shall be at the Lakeside Garden Centre, Crockerton, on the A350 just outside Warminster.  As in the 2013 Trail I will be exhibiting with Jules Horn, Maggie Port and Jane Gibson.  As an added part of our exhibition, on Friday 29th May 2.30pm – 3.30pm there is Art Chat! where all four of us will be at the garden centre to talk about our work so, a nice opportunity to catch us all.  All details will be on the Trail website shortly and usually by early April, hard copies of the brochure are available.  www.wvat.co.uk 

This will be my sixth trail so I am feeling a veteran!  I shall have mixed media landscapes and the cyanotypes are evolving even  more and there will be layered, torn works which were well received last December.  I shall be at the venue on both Saturdays as well as other times but do let me know if you would like to meet up.

The dates for the Christmas selling of my work are Saturday 29^th November and Saturday 13^th December and once again I shall be at the Friends’ Meeting House, York Street, Bath  BA1 1NG (opposite the Abbey Square), from 10am – 7pm.

Work includes another range of Colourblock brooches which, this time, use a subtler palette of handmade papers and the shapes were inspired by a recent visit to Salvadore Dali’s museum in Figueres, Northern Spain.  I was not drawn to the Surrealists at the time of studying history of art but Dali’s ‘nuclear fusion’ period where things seem to float, by atomic reconstruction almost, lead me on to abstract shapes.  Abstract via surrealism – who’d have thought it!  Here is a selection:

I do rather like naming ranges – giving work identities – so also on show are Landlines.  These are 5” square originals (unframed) done in mixed media of tracks and contours, shapes and landforms that attract me from places I have been to in Wiltshire and Dorset.  And finally, there are the deep, deep blue cyanotypes of a wide range of plants.  I am still on that journey …

The Bath German Christmas Market is on at the same time and is a dominating event, making the City very busy but the Friends’ Meeting House is a much calmer space, indoors and refreshments will be available to restore, away from the masses.

If any of you are in Bath on those two days, do come and say hello.

Wishing you all warmth and health for 2015 and seasonal good cheer.

What the weather will do this year!  The sequence, once we have surfaced from this appalling rain, followed by what level of cold and how long for – it all impacts on the growing cycles and I don’t expect to cyanotype until April.  Which is fine.  My workshop has been put back in order and awaits the expression of fresh ideas.  The year has begun with an unexpected purchase!  It was only when I went to collect the pictures from the ‘Making Light of It’ exhibition at the Herschel Museum that I found out that the Museum has purchased a work for their permanent collection – a perfect location indeed.

Until 16th December:  Making Light of It

The Herschel Museum of Astronomy, 19 New King Street, Bath  BA1 2BL

Mon. – Fri. 1 – 5pm, Sat. – Sun. 11am – 5pm.  Admission charge.  www.herschelmuseum.org.uk

Three of my works to compliment an exhibition about William Herschel’s work on the sun.

Until 10th December:  Secret Garden Café

Prior Park Garden Centre, Prior Park Road, Bath BA2 4NF

Mon. – Sat. 8.30am – 5pm, Sun. 10.30am – 4pm

A selection of work in a familiar environment – my third garden centre!

Saturday 23rd November and Saturday 7th December:  Bath Christmas Art & Craft Fairs

Friends Meeting House in York Street, Bath  BA1 1NG

9.30am until late.

A successful event for me last year so I am returning for two days.  Once again it is on during the German-style market in the city and will provide a restful space to see individual work by up to 20 artists and makers.

Saturday 25th May – Sunday 2nd June

Venue No. 15 Once again I am at Lakeside Garden Centre in the Crockerton Shopping Centre, just off A350 on the Shaftesbury Road out of Warminster.  There are three other artists this year:  Jules Horn (painting and print), Maggie Port (wooden sculpture) and Jane Gibson (ceramics).

I have to put it on record that it has been enormously difficult trying to cyanotype the work and ideas I’ve had for the past couple of months – we all know about the low amount of sunshine but, the knock on effect of cold night temperatures which we will still have the week leading up to the Trail, means that some of the plants and grasses I wanted to use are a long way off.  Despite that, I have new work which I am really pleased to be showing and that always give the Trail a buzzy edge to it.  The cyanotypes in their various forms now include smocked silk and a limited edition artist’s book, ‘The Skeletons in the Border’.  Also breaking away are the experiments with acrylics on oak blocks – ‘Cloud Cubes’.

Monday – Saturday 10.30am – 5.30pm, Sunday 10.30 – 4.30pm NB.  please note the earlier closing time on Sunday – it got missed off the brochure. For more Trail information please go to www.wvat.co.uk

I shall be at Lakeside all day Saturdays (25th May & 1st June) and Tuesday 28th May; Thursday 30th May in the morning and the afternoon of the last day.  It will come round all too quickly …..

And so to Bath … for another event.  I will be at the Friends Meeting House in York Street, Bath  BA1 1NG.  There will be approx. 30 stalls of artists and designer-makers and I will have both framed and unframed cyanotypes as well as my cards and blutubes.  Opening times are 9.30am until late.  The general Bath Christmas Market is also on in the City so there will be plenty of choice but, I will just mention, that I will be the only one selling Blutube Lamps!  See cyanotype gallery for a photo.  Rather lovely.

Christmas Market at Waterperry Gardens

24th & 25th November

10.30am – 4pm

Waterperry, Nr. Wheatley, Oxford OX33 1JZ

I will be having a stall at this Market in the wonderful Waterperry Gardens, home to the well-known Art in Action that takes place every July.  Tel 01844 339226 or see www.waterperrygardens.co.uk for more information.

I am now very conscious of day length and the temperature of the sun. I have been
able to seize some sunshine and produce some cyanotypes recently but each time
I think ‘Now that is the last time this year’. It has been a challenging spring
and summer with both aspects of work – art and gardening, as I have tried to
orchestrate herbaceous borders and realise what a fantasy it was to think I had
beaten bindweed!!! Despite all of that, the rich colours that are slowly
hinting, whispering and seeping in to the landscapes are always savoured.
Rather like a fine port.

For the work that I have at the Botanic Gardens in Oxford, I decided to use some of the plants that make a feature of their seed vessels or take on a distinctive form once the flowers have faded.  The shapes have an exquisite filigreed delicacy and the cyanotype
method captures these fragile skeletal structures as the sun prints around them, high-lighting details that cannot be easily seen.  It is a process that allows me to appreciate that there is beauty in decay!

1st June – 29th July 2012

Rose Lane, Oxford  OX1 4AZ

http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk

I am joining other paper artists for this lovely exhibition looking out on to the Garden’s plant collection.  My work will be looking at dispersal, patterns and inherited plant knowledge.  My work as a gardener and interest in herbal medicines make this a fascinating environment to exhibit in.   Please note an entry fee applies but it is well worth it!