Author: Catherine Barker-Sheard

Whenever I get some new paints I take the time to record them in my wee color notebooks. I like to know how it goes on, how it mixes with other paints, what it looks like really diluted. I also mix my new colors to see what results I get – that’s pretty random I know, because there’s no logic behind the mixes, but it’s amazing what you find along the way.

A week or two back I got some new Golden Fluid Acrylics – Jenkins Green, Viridian Green Hue, Indian Yellow Hue, Payne’s Gray and Anthraquinone Blue. All are new colors to me except for the last , which is one of my staples. Today I finally had time to record them in my notebook, so I spent a happy half hour or mixing different combinations and then noting the colors down for future reference. None of the results are spectacular because of the colors I happened to buy last time, but that’s okay. I quite like Anthraquinone Blue and Viridian, and can also see uses for Indian Yellow with a tiny hint of Viridian. The Jenkins Green is surprisingly dark straight out of the bottle but washes out to a lovely mossy color.

I have scanned the two pages I did this afternoon, plus an old page which fills my heart with joy each time I stumble across it while looking for color ideas – Orange, Magenta, Phthalo Green and Phthalo Blue. I also cropped in close so you can see how lovely Anthraquinone Blue really is! Enjoy.

Over at the GPP Crusades Michelle urged us to talk about where we live; maybe document changes we have made or explain what makes our home special to us. I decided to do both, but in two very different ways. The first is a page for my scrapbooks that shows the “after” from our 2008 kitchen renovations. Thanks Michelle, it was high time I documented the change from a 1950s drafty old kitchen to our modern kitchen/dining room. In the second, I have just quickly documented on a photo why our home, a plain house built in the 1950s, is special to us.

Yep, I have been a slack blogger. No real reason, just  a bad case of lethargy. Coming right though, thanks to a local Naturopath who has me drinking carrot and pineapple juice, and sipping Dandelion tea. Anyhow…

Mum and I are heading to Wellington tomorrow, ready for the opening of the Reflections of Italy exhibition at the NZ Academy of Fine Arts on Monday night. I am so looking forward to catching up with some of the artists I travelled to Italy with last year. Excited!

Those who read my blog from time to time will know that I am endlessly fascinated by the moon. The full moon makes me restless and sleepless, but also enervated and ready to paint at the same time. Did you know we’re at 4% of full, on a waning moon at the moment? I follow the moon’s waxing and waning each day, and watch the night sky for interesting variations. Although of course, for me, they’re all interesting…

Once I have some photos I like I play with them in Photoshop. My husband, Tony, can’t quite see the point no matter how much I wave my hands at him as I try to explain 😉  For me the endless crops, adjustments and colour combinations reinforce the colours I like – or don’t – and the constant looking at the image of the moon make my brain familiar with the shape so when I come to paint it my brain and hand know the end result I’m after. Picturing the moon is as familiar as doing up my shoe laces or driving a car.

I have a couple of friends who question my need to keep picking at one or two themes, such as the moon, poppies, the freezing works. I don’t bother defending myself; what I choose to paint is up to me and me alone. But I will say this – did Van Gogh paint too many sunflowers, or Jasper John’s create too many flag images? Thought not! There could never be enough works by Emily Kngwarreye for my liking either. Don’t know her work? Try Google images – amazing. I’m not deliberately trying to create a style that is recognizable in the way that galleries sometimes suggest. Art is a pleasure for me, not a career path. I am simply doing what is in my heart and in my soul; I am following what drives me. I’ll keep photographing the moon and playing with the images until it doesn’t grab my heart anymore – in the meantime, here are some of my latest images.

Over the last week or so I have been working on six paintings for the Reflections of Italy exhibition in Wellington next month. My initial trial piece wasn’t right, and it took a good friend to point out that it didn’t reflect me as an artist. I was trying to hard to make something that would sell. Onto a new trial piece, which sold overnight – just to reinforce the message (thanks to the Universe for the lesson). So I grabbed a couple of buckets of water, my six full size sheets of watercolour paper and got messy. Green paint everywhere! I splashed and washed and dripped my way to six backgrounds then left them to thoroughly dry. Not easy in this damp weather. Once they’d sat for a couple of days I stencilled on my poppy outlines and sat quietly filling them in. I love the feel of stenciled flowers; there’s a crispness and uniformity to them that pleases me.

Once the main flower colour — red, red, and red — was dry it was time for some details, like the wee black dots that say “poppy”, and checking that I had enough splashes of dark in the background. I have two of the pieces on my study wall at the moment so I see them all the time. If nothing strikes me in the next day or two I’ll declare them done. The other four can stay out in my art room for now. Next on my agenda is booking the accommodation so Mum and I can spend a couple of days in Wellington and go to the opening. Hopefully, I’ll also be able to help hang the works. Still not entirely sure how to hang mine, mind you…I think the answer might be tiny stainless steel dressmaking pins. It will depend, in part anyway, on what the walls in the exhibition are made of.