Some nights I am sleepless, for all kinds of reasons. People talk about the elephant in the corner of the room, meaning something people all know about but no one wants to discuss. I think of my sleeplessness as a menacing black raven, watching over me. This work depicts the raven, with lyrics from the Alan Parsons Project.
For reasons I don’t think I can put into words yet, today has been awful. I feel sad, unhappy and flat – sad mainly. Not my usual state at all. So I have made art, lots of it; which is good, because the signature swap is getting closer. I have done approx 30 A4 pages today, and my hands testify to the colours I have used. Here’s a wee sample.
A while back I asked if anyone wanted to do an envelope swap – enough people were keen so we all got underway. It’s taken longer than I imagined but no one seems to mind. I packed up all the envelopes and they are in tomorrow’s mail back to people. I forgot to ask permission to show people’s work on my blog so here is a very general show of just some of the loveliness that arrived in my mailbox. I hope people enjoy what they receive – I loved all the work that came in. We’ll be doing it again at some stage…
I’ve starting making trial signatures for a swap I’m involved in. We each make 11 sets of signatures, and send off by the 20th Sept, and signatures back from a variety of amazing artists. You can see more about it here.
I have been playing with some quite heavy watercolour paper, and have decided it is a bit *too* heavy. The other day I ordered some lovely paper from Gordon Harris, and I’m going to have a play with those tomorrow. I’ve got some mixed media paper, rice paper, watercolour paper and one other – escapes me for the moment just what it was. So far I have stuck with black, white and red, and have been using foam stamps, old credit cards, a spray bottle, stencils and marker pens. The mark making is too dark for the look I want; tomorrow’s lot will be a bit less obvious. Here’s what I have been doing so far:
In my last post I mentioned that I need to make 20 A4 size mixed media pieces for a Pecha Kucha presentation I’m doing at the LIANZA Conference in late September. I’m almost at the half way mark and having a great time. I’ve stencilled, stamped, painted, weaved paper, cut, glued, ripped … and, as usually happens, I forgot to put gloves on before I got started. Here’s the evidence:
Cath Sheard Art 