Welcome to my blog

Starting a Masters in Fine Art at Aberystwyth School of Art. 

September 2023

Starting University at 61 has been a blast so far! i would recommend it to anyone, it is the right time for me, however handing in work for the first semester is after Christmas, so I’ve still got a lot of work to do! but i am loving it. There is so much to learn and something about knowing yourself so well as you get older, being there for all the right reasons, it's a good feeling. It is lovely meeting new people, getting to know them and the work that inspires them, supporting each other through the work, we are a small group of five, working in very different ways.

The building is grade ll listed, built in the 'Renaissance'' style, it is very grand with outstanding works of Art adorning all the wall space, the building houses two gallery spaces on the ground floor, printing rooms in the basement, a large acoustically - designed lecture theatre, the spectacular wooden staircase leads to the life drawing room, the museum collection, which I am excited to explore as soon as i get a chance! it has all its original features, and it is beautiful, however they have had a new studio space built at the top of the building, where we have our studio space, it is a purpose built space and I am enjoying working there.

late September

Being an M.A. student, I am allowed to join in on the  second year-degree course workshops, run by Charlotte Brisland which is one of the reasons I wanted to come to Aberystwyth School of Art, to continue my study of painting. The first workshop in the life drawing room was about using a large brush (painter and decorator size) there were two life models wearing all kinds of accessories. I took (what I thought was a large brush!) which was not large enough! Charlotte kindly lent me a larger one. We did short poses, 5.00 and 10.00 mins, on a1 paper, i found it liberating, i was more conscious of the marks I made, it was more about thought-out mark making, this image is the best of three and the last one, it took the first two to get the hang of it. Being back in the life drawing room was a great feeling, there is something about it that i love, it is the best kind of exercise, the enviroment of being amongst the other students and looking at each other’s work is really inspiring. 

Starting to paint with oils.

I decided to use a still life as a composition for my first experiment with oil painting, it was nice to just paint what was in front of me as opposed to collecting images of things and piecing them together to make a composition as I do for my painting, this can be problematic as sometimes the images are different sizes, sometimes from the internet, old photographs or books, however I would like to experiment more with larger still life.

I found using oil paints enjoyable and the painting came together quickly. It was difficult getting used to the oil paint, trying to achieve the right consistency, whether to use linseed oil or oil medium, I used the latter, cleaning brushes is very different, which takes some time to get used to. I was quite happy with the outcome and it came together quickly.

Life drawing with oils.

Taking a paint pallet full of oil paints to the life drawing room Is a bit of a challenge, needing linseed oil, paint medium and a paint thinner as well as something to paint on, I am starting to get organized with it all now and have ordered a proper container for the paint thinner! This image is a quick pose, half an houre, Charlotte set up the pose and the clothing are the models own, I used a large brush and went straight on with the paint without drawing first. I have been trying out different surfaces to paint on, this one is M.D.F. board, I like that it is solid and flat, this work is 10cm by 20cm.

Oil onto Aluminum

We were asked to order a small aluminium panel to paint onto, it is 13 cm by 13cm, the smallest I have ever painted! I didn’t have any brushes that were right for the task in hand, so I had to use what I had, another lesson in getting organized before leaving the house! I used a short haired stiff meduim size brush, this meant I had to think about the marks I was making and how I used the brush, I used the side to make the lace up at the back of the models top. I really like this painting, the limited marks work well, and it meant that I can’t over work the paint, which is a good thing. I am going to do more oil painting like this one because I like the aluminium as a base the parts where the aluminium is showing in the background creates a sheen and looks like the light is coming through the painting.  

Collage and painting

Another one of Charlott's classes was to make a collage first and use it for the composition to transfer to paint, we were asked to bring landscape post cards to cut up, I took an artist catalogue by my good friend (Katie Allen) along with some copied photographs of the objects I would normaly use in my work, we spent some time with the sissors to make the collages, then painted using oil paints. I had originally thought I don’t want to use a landscape as It is not something i do, but it is always good to push out of your comfort zone and I quite liked the results, it gave the painting a surreal sort of quality.

I found this exercise interesting, and I am going to use it again. I used hard board for this one, it is thinner than the M.D.F. I had already prepared the background colour and scraped into it, this was dry and ready for me to work on top of. The first image is the paper collage and the second is the Painting.

Tutorials

I have a tutorial every two weeks, one week i see Charlotte Brisland and the other, Paul Croft who is a fine art printer, at the beginning of term we talked about doing some screen printing and later in the term some etching. He suggested that I made some rubbings from around the home to be transformed onto the screens, since my work is about the home and objects, again I was not hundred percent into this, but I wanted to give it a try. I made lots of rubbings, things that I thought I would not be able to use such as wooden spoons, a ceramic tiled table from my front room, I tried things like the light switches and ordinary tiles on the kitchen walls, eventually we transferred some of the images onto the screen. I am used to screen printing from when i did my Degree and HND, and it is something I have taught in my own classes and i have my own screens. The process in the School of Art is that the tutor dose all the transfering to the screen and the printing, I didn’t feel part of it and so have asked if I can use my own screens in the future.

I wanted to prepare some paper to print onto because I thought with the print alone would not be interesting enough, so I started to paint straight onto Red paper with a wash consistency of acrylic paint, with no guidelines, the result was some very loose paint, drawings, which I quite liked. We printed onto them with the rubbing images, which I am not sure if they worked or not, they are experiments which i can improve on in the next simesta, i will use the screen print straight onto a canvas and paint ontop as my next experiment. 

Extremely large work taking up my studio space!

Another thing I wanted to try out is painting on a large scale, so I went huge! ( 300 cm by 200 cm ) Probably too big for a first attempt, but I have started, so I will finish. However. It was the first time stretching a canvas and that went well, really enjoyed the process and it seemed more special painting onto it, the canvas is thicker and has a nice bounce to it.

I decided that this painting will be entered into to a competition for the “The Gwenllian Ashley Art Prize” we were given a talk about it by the artist Rob Davis, the title is "POWER"  and it is about climate change. The painting depicts a storm where my front room has been filled with water in a flood, all my objects are floating around the space, the books have fallen off the shelf, the pictures have come off the wall, objects from the mantle piece are floating torards the front of the canvas and the chandelier is swaing to the side with the force of the water, the scene is strange and surreal. I wanted to stay true to my usual subject matter and illustrate the power of water, we are becoming more familiar with the idea of weather changes and  many people are facing floods, we live in a challenging time where Global warming is a real threat. 

I am enjoying the challenge of this painting, it is completely out of my comfort zone and I keep having blocks with it, but I am hoping to finish by the 13th February as the hand in is on the 14th. As you can see in the image it is more like an underpainting at the moment, but I plan on doing a lot of work on it in January and Febuary.

I visited The Glyn Vivian Gallery in Swansea over the Christmas period, and really enjoyed seeing this work by Aurora Trinity Collective, Ncheta, 2023, An instillation as well as a series of photographs taken on Penarth beach, documenting a performance action improvised with Amak Mahmoodian and choreographed in collaboration with Campell Davis. Photograph's credit Amak Mahmoodian. The work seemed site specific, and i felt like the fabric adornded the old building in a beautiful way.