Cath Sheard Art

Author: Catherine Barker-Sheard

  • Here’s my excuse :-)

    It’s been a few weeks since I updated my blog, and it’s been on my mind, but then so have a lot of things. I thought I’d share with you an email I sent my staff, as it’s a good explanation of what’s been happening. Most of you know Tony and I live with my 87 year old Mum as her caregivers, so this will make sense:

    Mum got much worse Wednesday and I was told to take her to base and a surgical registrar would be waiting. By yesterday morning the gallstones had blocked the duct to the liver and without intervention she would die. Surgery was not an option as she can’t be anesthetized. After a blood transfusion and much debate they decided to put a tube down her throat into her stomach etc and try to get the stones out that way.
    They had to call in 3 surgeons, 2 anesthetists and some nurses and grab a theatre of someone — some poor patients got bumped off surgery for the afternoon – poor things 😦 
    The anesthetist was so worried he went back and asked the surgeon if there was any other option because even sedating her enough to do this was a major risk. No other options so off she went. I said to them “don’t underestimate how tough she is!”. I also said I knew they would do their best and if she died, it was okay, there’d been no other choice. He said we needed a lot of luck…
    90 long minutes later she was back. Looking good, on low level oxygen, and by 7pm was eating yogurt. She’s pain-free today and her bloods look good so she may be home later on today. Incredible! We really will have to poison her eventually!
    Well, that was two weeks or so ago. She did in fact come home that day, and my sister cared for her for me as I was off to a work conference where I was co-presenting a workshop. Mum has continued to improve and has put on about 1 kilo so far. She is quite frail and very tired, but getting a little better each day. Our doctor is delighted with her progress and the change in her. (and no, we’re not going to poison her eventually – honest…)
    So, why haven’t I been blogging? I’ve been playing nurse, not just caregiver and as I work fulltime it’s been a bit of a hard slog. But we’re getting there 🙂

  • Nightlights finished

    I have finished the last of the paintings for the Baker’s Dozen exhibition being organised by the very talented Tanya Dann. All I need to do now is string the back and package them up. Yahoo! I have included a side view as it was really hard to get a decent photo; the painting is darker at the top than this shows.

  • Crusade No 56 – I’m a believer

    Michelle Ward, over at the GPP Street Team site, challenged us this month to talk about art, what it means to us and the place it has in our lives. This is something I have thought about a lot lately, as I struggled to create some new works. I have used the piece I completed this morning as the background for a digital work, as it represents an end to struggling (again). Thanks for the inspirations Michelle – you rock.

  • Remembering poppies – morning light

    In the last couple of posts I have talked about the problems I was having getting some work completed for the Waverley Connections exhibition that opens this coming Friday night here in South Taranaki. My problem was trying too hard, ignoring my intuition – generally fussing and worrying instead of creating. This morning I grabbed a canvas, paints, wet wipes and went for it. I had in mind the early morning light in the Lazio region of Italy, and my memory of how the poppies appear quite randomly, wherever the earth has been disturbed. I’m much happier with this; it has the feel of light I was looking for, a sense of the poppies without being pedantic about how they really look, and a looseness that is much more my usual work. As always, the lesson is simple, but one I occasionally forget – each of us can only paint what is in us, any thing else simply doesn’t work.

  • A painterly war zone

    I have two artworks to complete for the end of the month. Last weekend I realised I had already said what I was doing, which was not what I had in mind, so a quick change of process and I thought it would all be good. How wrong I was! I put the initial acrylic washes down and those went well. I selected some images for the first collage items and got out the soft gel medium like I always do. Tore out the first image, stuck it down and though “yep, perfect”. As it dried a medium-sized bubble appeared in the middle so I quickly soaked and scrapped it off again. I wasn’t prepared to have the same hassle again, as I had been thinking of quite big collage pieces which are harder to get bubble-free, so changed tactic slightly. More washes, some drawing with paint, and then smaller collage. Yep, not bad.

    So this afternoon I added some more light washes and then decided to work over some of it with white, to partially obscure some of the work. Something I do all the time. So why did I grab the wrong tube of paint and end up using Iridescent White instead of Titanium White? So I grabbed a palette knife and scraped off the top layer then rubbed it back with some alcohol soaked cleaning cloths and took as much paint off as I could. Now I have this shiny sheen across the bottom left hand corner – which I loathe.

    Why does this happen sometimes? I know the answer if I am honest with myself. I have got all hung up on who I am exhibiting with, and who is going to see the works, and have stopped trusting myself to just get on with it. Not the first time it has happened and won’t be the last I guess. In some ways I don’t mind that these two works will end up being multi-layered war zones because they reference the time we spent in Italy last year, visiting Monte Cassino and seeing first hand the impact WWII had for the people of the Cassino region. Perhaps these need to be a war zone, after all…

    (edited an hour or so later) I am starting again. Tthe current canvas can go in the ‘to be worked over’ pile. I can’t be bothered fighting it right now 😉