Back to pulp and paint

Looking at arty stuff

Alright, so it’s May and the season of art fairs is getting under way. Things seem to be back to normal in that regard and luckily, having popped into the Corner Gallery during the week, I realised Landmark Arts had their Spring art fair at the weekend – and my friend Rachel Maritz would be showing for the first time.

That took care of Saturday. Before heading down to the village for the express bus to Kingston I cleared out a corner of my room and dropped off a load of wrapping stuff for Jackie since she’s doing a load of posting and packing right now.

After crawling through slow traffic on the way to Kingston then getting another bus out to Teddington, it was lunchtime. Chel had already sold a painting at the private view and another while I was making my way round the show. Good start though the numbers through the door were perceived to be a bit low according to some. It was a good show as usual with a varied mix of media and styles and a good balance between 2D, 3D and jewellery.

Spent ages at Attain Collection; a science/art guy who’d worked out a process to pour iron powder mixed in silicone onto an industrial magnet. Its field then ‘built’ structures which, once the silicone had slumped, looked like sea urchins to me. They looked solid but were in fact flexible. Totally fascinating and I was racking my brain to see what kind of applications the technique could have. If you have any ideas, drop him a line cos he's keen to develop the potential of the material.

Since I had to stop off in Kingston, of course I had to pop into Pullingers and get a few tubes of paint...and a tub of crackle paste (on offer) and a pot of King Gold liquid metal. I could’ve bought one of each colour there as they're so luscious with their rich colours and sometimes a pearlescent shimmer.

Doing arty stuff

Jackie and I had a chat about sculptures and the idea of chill-out/quirky poses again - doing a collection of 4-6 pieces would be good. So, now I have 4 armatures newly made, one sculpt in progress and a pot of pulp draining into a bowl behind me right this minute for the others. So much for giving my elbow a rest (it gets tight after a few hours sculpting).

Rearranged my work corner/area again so everything is more accessible than before and bought a table top easel from The Works since there was so much mess on the table I was painting with the canvas in my lap.

My abstracts are continuing to change. Some of them are nothing like the previous ones - like this one. Started out as an abstract figure which just failed in every way. In the end it was just a way to put colours together as an experiment.

Others have had some additions here and there and there are another two in progress and that moment where I had half the idea but not the bit on how to finish them.

Two of the little ones have been tweaked. I pulled all the collaged wall coverings off one and it's left some nice spaces which have potential, while the other had some vertical lines added.

They're quite subtle but they add a bit more interest. The tissue paper over canvas does give a nice base to paint on - lots of texture to use to full effect.

It's all play and testing out colour mixes, tools and ideas. Anything goes in abstract art but the end result has to be something you like and if you like it, probably someone else will too.