Cath Sheard Art

Category: Uncategorized

  • Close encounter with signs and symbols

    As a teen I loved the movie ‘Close encounters of the Third Kind’. In it lineman Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss, becomes obsessed by the shape of a mountain, a place he has never been to. He sculpts it out of mashed potatoes, in shaving cream, builds a model out of wire – and finds that others share his obsession. He makes his way to a place protected by the military and witnesses a space ship make contact then land. What does that have to do with my art? Well…

    The wall I painted for our final exhibition at TLC.

    In my final year at The Learning Connexion I did quite a lot of work with symbols, specifically a (mainly downward) arch shape, a slanted oval and a sort of bent cross / power pole. They mean something to me, but I don’t know what. The arch belongs on its own, the oval and cross belong together. Why? Again, I don’t know, but like Roy I keep exploring them.

    I had stopped working with them for a time, but have been looking at my older work and realised I need to keep using them. I realise they are not unique, but they are becoming part of my visual language and being authentic to my true self means exploring them.  Words on their own are not unique, but what a writer or poet does with them often is – and so it is with art. I hope to develop my own language and refine it over time.

    Whilst at TLC I produced probably a hundred or more works that started with a photos of some shadows in our driveway that I then worked back onto in paint, replicating some of the lines, again in a curved cross pattern. I lost the photo and started replicating the shape on its own on black backgrounds. Eventually I painted a large wall black and, with no planning or end in mind, I painted huge cream curved crosses it.

    Today I have been working on a smaller scale, on postcard sized 300gm watercolour paper, using Golden fluid acrylics, oil pastels, water-soluble pencils and giant poster pens.  Tomorrow I think I’ll work a bit bigger and see what that does.

  • Doing what I want, not what I should…

    I spent some time the other day, just sitting in my art room, staring at the walls. Bored? No! Far from it; thinking about what I create and why. It’s a question I come back to from time to time, sometimes reasonably frequently if I have a lot on my mind.

    What could I see while I sat there? Most of the works on the walls are mine, bar two pieces – one by fellow NZ Art Guild member Tanya Dann, and one by Sandra Toornstra who I attended The Learning Connexion with. It was interesting to consider what I have chosen from my own works to look at all the time and why I chose them. It says something about my true preferences. You know the ones; the preferences that are about creating and enjoying, not exhibiting and selling. And boy oh boy, I realised once again that a chasm has appeared. What I love and what I create are not the same thing at the moment. No wonder I am feeling a bit under-inspired. I must be a slow learner because it’s not the first time this has happened…

    How is it that I come to this realisation, then lose it again after a while? In some ways I blame the internet. It’s so easy to get distracted by stats, figures, trends & sales and forget what’s in your heart. Cynthia Morris wrote a great article along these lines recently.  Post edited to add: I’m also reading Nicholas Carr’s “The shallows: how the internet is changing the way we think, read and rememebr” on the same subject. Carr argues that not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such mind-altering technology. He believes the Net is actually re-wiring our brains and that by moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web is actually fostering ignorance. This is a challenging book, with a message worth thinking about.

    What am I going to do about it? My commitments to myself are as follows:

    • Facebook twice a day and that’s it.
    • Limit the amount of time I spend online each day.
    • Don’t enter any exhibitions etc till next year.
    • Spend from now till after Christmas creating for fun only – *no* selling.

    So, back to the original question – what did I see on my walls? Here’s the answer:



  • New artwork from Tanya Dann in my collection

    Every year the NZ Art Guild organises an Art Swap amongst its members. Artists send in details of a work they are prepared to swap and these are loaded on to the website. Participants then choose the top three works they’d like, and the organiser spends hours figuring out how to make sure everyone gets a work that was at least in their top three choices – I suspect it’s quite a task. I entered one work this year – ‘a pink pear’ and hopes for a Tanya Dann work in return. I got my wish, and then Tanya and I did a deal which saw me get a new work, just for me, in my favorite colours; purple and orange. Awesome! I am just so happy with it. The colours are spectacular.

    Have you ever thought about why owning original art is important? Have a look at this short piece by Kirsty Hall – I think she makes some good points.

    A Pink Pear by Cath Sheard 2009
    Light Fantastic by Tanya Dann 2010

  • NZ Art Guild challenge – Ralph Hotere

    This fortnight’s NZ Art Guild Challenge was to base a work on the works of Ralph Hotere. Fantastic! But so much to choose from; dark and brooding paintwork? A cross? Sketchy lin drawing? Aluminium? Text? Oh, the choices … and all of them appealing.

    I spent some time on Google images, looking at some of his works, then got out a couple of books I have of his works, and perused the pages. Finally, I decided on black and white with text. I started with a back background and added white pastel, white wax pencil and white gel pen. Next, I erased some of the pastel to give me some lines in the white. I scanned it into Photoshop and added a semi-transparent layer with the words of a HIM song, Like St. Valentine, in white using a font that’s based on my own (untidy) handwriting.

    Hotere & HIM; Like Heaven

  • Crusade #45 – back to back

    Michelle’s challenge this month over the GPP Street Team site was to make colour copies of the backgrounds we scraped together last month, and finish them a few different ways. Today was a rare day for me; aside from the washing, there was *nothing* I needed to do. No paperwork, no artwork due, no anything!

    So, I did a pile of colour copies, grabbed some supplies and ripped into it. I used stencils, Sharpies, transparencies, foam stamps, bubble wrap stamping, hand writing, collage, stickers. With some of the pages I then re-scanned and added text in Photoshop.

    All up, I did around 20 pages. Here are a few that I particularly like (I’m showing a couple of the original backgrounds too). In some of them not all of the writing is visible. This is because some of them became like journal pages as I worked and the messages on them feel reasonably personal given that I’m quite introverted. If you can read it all, go for it. If you can’t, never mind!

    As always, thanks so much for the inspiration Michelle. If you enjoy looking at these, you’ll find links to other artists who are playing this month on the left hand side of the GPP Street Team home page. And if you want to join in – cool! Can’t wait to see what you create 🙂

     

    background 1

     

     

    background 2

     

     

    I value diversity

     

     

    My guarded heart

     

     

    Valued tools

     

     

    Painted hands

     

     

    Poppies

     

     

    My hands…