Cath Sheard Art

Category: Uncategorized

  • More on the Freezing Works

    Last night was one of those nights where all I wanted to do was paint – not sleep, work, or whatever – just create something. Turns out it was the full moon. Along with many other creatives, I suffer from “full-moon-itis”! About 10pm I gave in and opened a packet of A4 size Hahnemuhle watercolour paper. The 300gsm is heavy enough that I can work on it without needing to stretch it; perfect for doing mixed media at my desk, and it’s a lovely surface to work on.

    I have done a lot of works inspired by the old Patea Freezing Works over the last few years, and since going to Italy in 2010 I’ve also done a lot of works that involve poppies. Last night I combined the two and depicted the freezing works site regenerating, with poppies growing where the land has been disturbed, just like in Cassino, Italy. I kept one derelict building at the far right, and a few ‘ghost’ buildings along the horizon, where they still exist in my memory. I used Golden airbrush acrylics, a super fine Sharpie pen, Faber Castell aquarelle sticks and Caran D’Ache Neocolors, then added text in Photoshop.

  • Crusade 61: end of an era

    I’ve been doing the Crusades off and on for years now. Michelle has enriched our lives in so many ways; thank you so much. The sense of community is huge. Michelle’s taking a well earned break. So this is my final Crusades entry for a while – the writing says it all for me. By the way, the challenge was to “show restraint” – to leave some space and let the work breath.

  • More collages

    The only thing I have to show this week is more of the collages I made for Dale Copeland’s International Collage Exhibition, so here we go. I have done lots of study for my Museum paper, and quite a lot of work towards next month’s newspaper already (in my own defense!)

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  • A storm and ICE!

    Ten days ago we had a massive storm come through South Taranaki; Patea, where we live was the epicenter. Scary stuff. 600 power lines down, more than 50 homes badly damaged – roofs ripped off, walls collapsed, power poles snapped in half, two houses have to be demolishedImage.

    As a Council worker I was involved in things such as going door to door checking on people, and then my two libraries provided access to social services for people. I’ve worked two weekends in a row, so have a couple of days off now just to chill out a bit.

     

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    It’s hard to imagine the scale of destruction, or the noise at the height of the storm at about 4am. We were lucky; my car has some damage, as does the car shed, spa pool roof and aviary. Compared to others we were so fortunate.

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    And speaking of chilly, have you heard of ICE? It’s the International Collage Exhibition, which used to be called the Baker’s Dozen. You can read more about it here. I wasn’t supposed to be doing any artwork this year, but this is one I have entered before and I just couldn’t resist. I made 10 collage in the end, and they’re heading off to organiser Dale Copeland tomorrow. Here’s a couple of the collages:Image. 

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  • Do you support other artists?

    One of the things about being an artist  in New Zealand is that we’re all practicing our art in small country. We may not all know each other, but when we do meet we’re generally a pretty supportive bunch. We blog each other’s work, support each other’s exhibitions, chat online … and generally bolster each other to keep at it. And some of us buy each other’s work – not just because it is a fellow Kiwi;’s work – but because we have a genuine love of their work. There are only a very few artists worldwide whose work I collect, and I have talked about them before.

    There are a small handful of Kiwi artists I have work by and only two I actively collect. Tanya Dann is one of those. I am lucky to have three of her stripe paintings, one of which was done especially for me. Last year Tanya had to make a decision about the direction of her PhD and that led her to a series of work on the Damselfly. That series isn’t complete yet and she is thinking about its future. But the interest in the series was so strong that she decided to do a small work each day throughout February. I have been following with interest and this weekend decided to branch out from her stripes – and am now the proud owner of three of her Damselfly works. Why three? I thought they’d look amazing hung together. Here’s one of the works that will be winging its way to me this coming week. So happy…