Cath Sheard Art

Category: Uncategorized

  • The joy of collaborating

    Pen Kirk and I have our second joint exhibition on at Left Bank Art Gallery in Greymouth at the moment. Here ‘s what I wrote for the opening, but ended up talking off the cuff.

    Shattered lanscapes – this is a project that has taken some time to complete, its needed room to breathe.

    In the time we’ve been working on it Pen’s son left formal education and got a job, and Pen changed jobs too. I’ve moved my husband to a different resthome and recently my partner moved in with me. Big life changes.

    I believe creating art helps us to change, and supports us as life changes. Art also teaches us, but sometimes the lesson isn’t obvious until we’re well into the process.

    I’m going to go off on a tangent for a moment. I promise I’m not offering relationship advice, although do with it what you will. I hope the connection will become clear as I talk.

    A while ago I was introduced to NYT best selling author Mel Robbin’s Let Them theory, although actually it didn’t start with her. That’s the librarian in me, I don’t like people taking ideas and not crediting the original author!

    The Let Them theory in a nutshell … your colleagues are going out to lunch and don’t invite you. Let them. Your partner constantly forgets to tell you their plans. Let them. Your mother in law excluded you from the Christmas Eve present swap. Let them. When you let them, without trying to change people, you see who they really are … then you can decide what you do with that.

    Ok, great, half of us are now getting divorced! How does that relate to collaborative art? Before I explain, I owe Pen an apology. When we were setting up I put more value on my need to get organised than her need to feel excited about the process and what we’ve achieved. I forgot to Let Them … sorry Pen, I should have trusted your process.

    Looking back, I can see that Pen and I applied the Let Them theory to our collaboration. Because we’ve been creating art together for 6 years we have a high trust model, where we don’t need to seek each other’s permission before acting.

    Does your art partner want to cut up the work? Let them. They want to pour black ink on it? Let them! Does Pen want to scribble across your favourite area on something? Let them!

    When you Let Them in the collaborative art space you get to see art that is truly from that persons art and soul … then you can, in turn, choose what you do with that … knowing that you are free to act in whatever way feels most authentically you.

    That’s a hugely trusting position to take, but it’s also incredibly powerful and freeing. I’m sure it’s obvious from the work on these walls that what Pen and I create is quite different, and the works we create together are different again … the act of collaborating with high trust creates work that neither would make on their own.

  • Sea Pinks

    Over the last week or two my small art journal, where I work out ideas, has been inundated with bright greens or greenish yellows. There’s a lot of hot pink, sometimes on the horizon line or cliff edge, or scattered in the landscape.

    Sandra was looking at my art journal, went off for a few minutes, and came back to show me Sea Pink (Thrift) on to coast of Wales – and they flower in Ireland too. And there’s the answer…much of what I paint is based on memories of the landscape. Mum’s birth mother Angela was Irish; somewhere in my DNA the memory exists of the Sea Pinks flowering in the landscape.

    That might sound far fetched, but think about this. People with Scottish ancestry often feel an affinity with the bagpipes even if they don’t know they have Scottish heritage. They’ll say it is like they know the music from the first time they hear it. Why? Because it’s wired into their ancestral memory, or however you want to describe it. Of course there are examples from all over the world, from all cultures.

    Have I been to Ireland and seen the Sea Pinks in flower? No. Does my soul, my shared ancestral memories, know them? I think so. I’d love to know if Angela liked them.

  • It’s all about texture

    When I was at The Learning Connection my tutor, in the 4th year, commented that my work was “all about the edges”. Peter was absolutely right, and the edges of the work are still critical to me. In the last couple of years I’ve become increasingly interested in the idea of texture, while keeping the work very flat. When I was a scrapbooker, and scrapbook tutor, I could never get into lumpy things on my pages…

    Pen Kirk and I are working on our next exhibition, titled Shattered Landscapes which opens late October. We’re showing our own work, and joint collaborative works. I’ve been working on a few pieces this afternoon and I’ve been quite focused on creating a sense of texture.

  • Swatching new paints

    I was fortunate to win a lovely set of Liquitex heavy body acrylic paints in a raffle run by TWB Framing & Art Supplies. They’re based in Feilding, have good stock at reasonable prices, and are lovely to deal with.

    I don’t always swatch new paints but thought I’d have a play and see what I could come up with. I’m pleased with the lovely soft greys in particular. Now I just have to remember to use them; I might keep my swatch notebook on my desk for a while.

  • New stencils

    I ordered a few new stencils, designed by Elizabeth St Hilaire, from Joggles recently. I’ve got a few sets by Elizabeth and love them all. This time I got the Picasso mask and stencil set, and a few individual stencils. I had a play today, and think I’m going to get a lot of use from these.