Cath Sheard Art

Author: Catherine Barker-Sheard

  • After Motherwell 2

    Here is the 2nd in the Motherwell series, which will be going on display in Auckland from June of this year, unless sold first. 30×30″ acrylic on canvas. Its counterpart, which I posted about last week, one a NZ Art Guild competition.

     after-motherwell-22

  • After Motherwell wins with NZAG

    As a member of the New Zealand Art Guild I regularly enter their Masters Month competitions. The most recent competition was to produce a work inspired by Robert Motherwell. This piece won the NZAG Masters Month competition for Feb/March 2009. As I said when I entered it, I started off inspired by Motherwell and then got right into the abstract expressionist thing, and this is the result.

    It’s 30×30″ in acrylic and ink on gallery wrap canvas and is for sale on ArtFire.

    After Motherwell #1
    After Motherwell #1

  • Full tide 2

    Here’s another 4×8″ work, thinking about the Tasman  Sea as seen from our beautiful beach, and the hot colours of sunset at this time of year.

    Full tide #2
    Full tide #2

  • A portrait by Jeanette

    Huh? Okay, let me explain. Jeanette Jobson is one of the artists involved with Watermarks, a blog I follow. I hopped over to her blog last week to see what she was up to and commented on something I saw. Nothing unusual in that.

    The next thing I know, we’re friends on Facebook. Cool; it’s great to be networking with other artists. For Jeanette’s birthday she was drawing out the name of someone who’d commented, to do a portrait for and I won. Wahoo – I am so excited! The photos I sent Jeanette are shown below.

    My  Mum is turning 85 in late June. As many of you know, Mum has chronic health problems and was not meant to live this long, in fact 2 years ago now the health system started putting palliative care in place. So this birthday is special. And have a watercolour portrait, done by Jeanette, to give to Mum is extra special. Thanks so much Jeanette, I am so appreciate of your generosity.

  • Monoprinting on fabric

    My friend Trisha and I have a private challenge going on, where we each create a textile piece once a month and share the process, and results, with each other. I am running a bit behind, however…

    I have been seeing a lot of artists doing monoprints and linocut lately, and that got me thinking. Today was THE day, Taranaki Anniversary – an extra day off work to do art with. Cool!

    I simplified the photo using ‘cut out’ in Photoshop, reversed it and printed it out. I drew the basic lines onto acetate then painted it with acrylics. (they dried a bit too quick on the heat really). I did a quick test run on some scrap paper and was satisfied I had the basic shapes. I’d already washed and ironed some very pale fabric, but left it vaguely damp. I re-did the paint on the acetate, laid the fabric down, put paper over the top and rolled like heck with a brayer. I lifted it off quickly before the two bonded together and there it was – my first monoprint on fabric. I repainted and lifted off another couple, so I would have some to play with.

    This is much more abstract than last month’s work, and I’m pleased with that. I want to do some stitching on top of the paint now, to put some details in here and there. Oh, and while I was at it, I layered the base photo and the fabric monoprint on top of each other in Photoshop – just to see what would happen.

    Original photo and fabric monoprint, layered in Photoshop.