Cath Sheard Art

Category: Uncategorized

  • Experimenting with stencils

    I’ve been experimenting with stencils and spray inks lately. I find the process quite messy, probably because I forget to put gloves on in my excitement to get started, but I love the results. The inks I’ve been using aren’t waterproof so I have to be careful about using water media in the top layers, but other than that, they’re very versatile.  I’ve also starting making my own sprays by using Golden Fluid acrylics and water in a fine Derwent spray bottle. It means I can make my own colours and the result is waterproof so I can use water media in the upper layers.  Incidentally, I got the spray bottle to go with a set of Derwent Inktense Blocks, and I love them.

    I can see all kinds of possibilities with layering images using the stencils. I lent them to some ladies at the library the other day, and they had a great time decorating garden pots using them. We gave the terracotta pots two quick coats of gesso, then a base layer of whatever acrylic colour they fancied and let them loose with the stencils.

    In the meantime my friend Martha Marshall has started experimenting with Gelli Plates. Martha makes fabulous prints anyways; she’s a fearless artist who never hesitates to experiment. I’m fortunate to own a few works by Martha and love them all. Anyway, watching the work she is producing with the Gelli Plates makes me want to try incorporating some print making with using stencils. In the past I have done lino cutting and mono prints, so once I have done the next newspaper and sent it to the printers, it might be time to get out the lino cutting tools…

    This is the lino I cut for printing the Coliseum

  • Exhibition coming up

    The annual Pocket Rockets exhibition opens shortly in Dunedin. As always, artist Tanya Dann has done a great job of organising it all, and has her first solo exhibition happening at the same time. And, just so she doesn’t get bored, she’s a PhD student as well. I’m sending six works down, including 3 that I have only just finished. Normally I send work from one series, but this time something tells me to send a range of work down, so that’s what I have done. Pocket Rockets is a great chance for people to buy original artworks as Christmas gifts.

    Memories of Bryce Canyon. Acrylic, 12×12″. C Sheard, c2012.
    One of those days. Mixed media, 10×10″. C Sheard, c2012.
    I’m gonna make it. Mixed media, 10×10″. C Sheard, c2012.

  • Fractured earth

    A couple of posts back I mentioned that I wanted to do a new painting for our kitchen, which is mainly a medium cream color, with deep grey bench tops. The last painting was a darkish moon painting, which I really like, but I felt the kitchen needed a lift. I stuck to mainly transparent Golden Fluid acrylics plus some black, and here’s the result:

  • The return of ‘Little Miss Loud’

    As some of you will be aware, our cat Goldie went missing last weekend. It’s not the first time. Once, she went missing for about 5 weeks (and cried in her sleep for weeks afterwards), but this time didn’t feel good. That might just because of the other things going on, such as the dog being sick and Tony having pneumonia. You need some background to fully appreciate what happened this morning.

    We rescued Goldie as a very young kitten. She spent two days crying in the front garden at Christmas time before we softened and bought her into our household. After all, we already had a cat and a dog. The lesson Goldie took from that was that yelling works. 

    Goldie is an unusual cat. Oftentimes she’ll call out to us as she comes into the house, and then call out all the way down the hall. If we don’t answer her she just waits, and keeps calling; so we call out things like “come on, it’s okay, you know were we are”. She calls back, we call out again, she calls back – you get the idea. And it’s loud (see above). We call Goldie the “loudest cat on the planet”. We’ve watched some tv programs where people reckon their cat is loud. We have news for them! Mum is two-hearing-aids worth of deaf but as a young cat, she could wake Mum.

    This morning at about 7.45 I heard a cat cry, and it got louder and louder. I called out “Goldie” as I shot out of bed. The yelling got louder and by the time I got to the back door she was really yelling. I opened the door, said “where have you been?”, opened a tin of food, then left her to it and went to tell Tony in case somehow he had missed the commotion. She finished her food then started up the hall, crying out to us and she walked. I called back and she yelled again. By the time she got to our room she was crying so loudly we were both laughing. It’s hard to find a way to describe how loud she was; there’s just no obvious way of indicating her true volume. Tony did mutter that she has the volume of a smoke alarm, but at a different pitch!

    She seems fine. She isn’t skinny, dirty or injured. We used to wonder if she gets herself shut in people’s houses, because we know she goes visiting, but I can’t help thinking she just goes hunting. She has spent the morning wandering in and out of the house, eating a few more biscuits etc – and every time she comes back to find us she calls out to us the whole time. Welcome home again Little Miss Loud! 

  • Visiting time

    Oprah used  to talk about things she knew for sure. What I know for sure is that some years are easier than others, and few things stay the same forever. This is not turning out to be an easy year but, you know what, no one ever promised things would be easy…

    Tonight I visited Mum and she was having a good night. We chatted for about half an hour and she was quite connected. It was a nice visit. Some days I really don’t feel much like going up but I  know how important it is to keep our connection going.

    Is Mum the bright intellectual person she once was? No. Is she still my mother? Yes? In the end it’s family that matters.