Cath Sheard Art

Author: Catherine Barker-Sheard

  • West Coast Sunset – new abstract paintings

    The sunsets out over the Tasman Sea here on the West Coast in New Zealand have been just stunning lately. The sky is so clear, and the colours are so very vivid – the light catches on the sea and can be quite dazzling. Sometimes I watch out our kitchen window and just think “if I paint that exactly as it is, no one will believe me!”. I guess that is always one of the challenges for an artist; to take what they see and to make it believable even when it seems to defy logic. Or, as I usually do, to skip the reality and instead capture the feel of it; to capture the song it sings in your heart.

    I think one of the things that I really value about living in rural New Zealand is the clean, fresh air – our sky is so clear that sunrise and sunset can be just amazing. I’m not much of a morning person so it is rare for me to see a sunrise. Okay, very, vary rare…   On the other hand, I am a terrible insomniac. Some nights, when I’m up at 2 or 3 in the morning drifting round the house, I sit and watch the night sky – clear and bright and full of stars. How incredible is that?

    I have just completed two new paintings, both abstracting the view and colours I see from our house in the evenings. Do they capture what the view from our house looks like? No they don’t. Do they capture the colours of the view? Yes, I think they do. Do they capture how the veiw makes me feel, the joy it brings me? Yes, absolutely.

    These are 6×6″ on gallery wrap canvas and are for sale on my Etsy site and on TradeMe

    west-coast-sunset-2

    west-coast-sunset-1

  • Pear-ing at my canvas – new pear painting

    Having spent half the day yesterday stamping, masking, stencilling and gessoing pear shapes as part of the GPP Street Team Crusades, I could not get the pear shape out of my mind. I already knew I would end up taking the shape onto canvas, but what I could not know as I cleaned up my mess last night, was that by the end of today I would have finished 2 16×16 canvas with – yep – pears on them!

    With the one shown I started by masking out the words and the pear, then spray painting over the top in orange and purple. I use Plutonium G aerosol spray because it smells nice, has a lovely powdery matte finish and is CFC free so it is good for the environment. And besides, the c0lours have great names like Hot Sauce, Vegan and Manko. I fixed the spray paint, drew in the black lines and let thin black paint dribble down the canvas then added some swipes of thin black at the bottom. As the paint dried I dabbed it here and there with a tissue, taking the paint off again and leaving behind textural highlights.

    I underpainted the pear, then re-sprayeed to get rid of some white gaps round the pear from the first spraying. I fixed it again (getting spray in my hair), splashed some black onto the canvas for a bit more texture and added a few more layers onto the pear. When the paint on the pear was nearly dry I scraped back into the paint to get down to the initial layers in some areas – these sort of glow through. Finally, I added some oil pastel here and there on top of the scratchings to really make the highlights sparkle.  

    For the record, my hands and arms tell the story; I have spray paint, ink, varnish and quite a few colours of acryclic paint on them – and to finish things off nicely, a little oil pastel under my nails!

    pear-007

  • Crusade 27: Shape Up

    6a00d8341c6e6653ef010536ac0171970b-700wi1Michelle’s challenge for Jan 2009 is to explore just one shape – stencil it, mask it, stamp it, gesso it…   It didn’t take me long to decide on the PEAR for my shape. It’s a shape I was using in some figure paintings about 3 years ago and the idea of rediscovering it really appealed.

    I spent today in my art room and made stencils, masks and a stamp. I played with spray paint, gesso, acrylic paint and Indian ink. I am so excited my what I’ve done that I want to make an art quilt featuring a pear, and do a big painting using the pear shape as well.

    I like the ones where the pears are not so obvious; I think this is perhaps my favorite.

    pear-6-0011

  • Loosening up

    I came home from work tonight incredibly, physically, tense. Not sure why – it was an okay day. I guessfigure some days I feel my job and its responsibilities more than others; or perhaps I started the day a bit tired anyway. Who knows …  Anyway, what I  needed was to relax once I had all my ‘chores’ out of the way. So I’ve aspects-of-the-land-3had a play with acrylics, ink, pastels, oil pastels – just loosening up mentally and physically. Now it’s time to set breakfast out for the morning and head off to bed with a glass of water and a book on fused quilting.

  • My word is …

    Along with setting some goals for the year, I’ve been doing some creative thinking using a journal mydear friend Steph gave me called “The sacred journey daily journal for your soul”. At the start of the year the books encourages doing lots of thinking about key words, goals, attitudes, affirmations. My word for 2009 is balance. My creative expression is “my art is mine and it is OK“. More on that in another post. But back to balance; why balance, and what does it mean for me?

    Balance:

    • between my needs and the needs of those around me
    • between work and home
    • between time doing art and time marketing art
    • between the process of making art and the goal of the piece of art
    • between time enjoying the net and time wasted on the net
    • between wanting things now and wanting to get our $ under control
    • between creating for joy and creating for profit

    And a more balanced attitude about:

    • food
    • exercise
    • putting tasks off for another day
    • taking on other people’s worries

    I can think of a lot of ways in which BALANCE is what is needed in my life in 2009.

    Many of the artists whose blogs I follow are also talking about their goals and key words for 2009: Martha Marshall, Tina Mammoser, Vivien Blackburn,and Jeanette Jobson all have interesting posts for you to enjoy. Happy reading!