Cath Sheard Art

Category: Uncategorized

  • Trying out a new sales site

    As many artists are discovering, some of the older sales websites now have so many artists on them that it’s easy to get a little (or a lot) lost in the crowd. I was with Etsy for ages and it worked well, but have seen no activity there for ages now. I also joined ArtFire but it didn’t work for me – it’s a lovely site, but I couldn’t get it to work for me. Recently one of my works sold almost as soon as it was dry, then another person contacted me wanting to purchase the same work. This got me to thinking about print, postcards etc; and that led me to RedBubble. So I have taken the plunge and signed up, with my Freezing Works series being offered as postcards, prints and posters. With Christmas not that far away, it’s certainly worth a shot. Why not pop across and take a look?

    Here’s the work I could have sold twice in a couple of motnhs:

  • Crusade #44: In a scrape

    Michelle’s challenge for the month over at the GPP Street Team site was to put away pour paint brushes, grab an old credit card, and get scraping. This idea really suits how I work so my answer to the challenge was “heck yes!”. I keep any old library cards people hand back in, so always have a supply of cards on hand for using in my art. All the following are done with an old library card; some have stamping on top, others have oil pastel and are wrapped with crinkled freezer wrap for texture. This has made me feel quite inspired and ready to get into some serious paintings; thanks so much Michelle – you really do rock.

  • No art this week

    Well, not in the sense of making art anyway. I have read art books, played around rearranging my art room, and thought about art … but not created a new something. Mum has been very sick (pneumonia that turned rampant within a couple of hours) and that means other things move down the priority ladder. She had a night in Intensive Care, then 6 more nights in the Base Hospital – a 3 hour round trip away. She’s now in the local Hospital, so only a 50 minute round trip. I go up  after work each day and help with her evening meal, fill in the menu choices for the next day, make sure she does her breathing exercises. And we go for a walk – Mum on her walker, me trundling slowly along beside her. Each day our walk gets a little longer and she gets a few steps closer to coming home again.

    One thing’s for sure – being there matters, in a myriad of ways. So the art can wait – love comes first.

  • Where will your art be in 80 years?

    This postcard was made in 1932 by someone local to Patea. I think it is a lovely image that exemplifies how people saw Patea at that time. The image was sent to me by Ron Hughes from the Tauranga Postcard Centre; he’s a lovely dealer who sends me images from time to time that he thinks the readers of our community newspaper might enjoy. This postcard was mailed to someone in Australia in the 1930s and Ron found the postcard in Uruguay.

    When the artist created this postcard cover almost 80 years ago could they have imagined it would still be being viewed 8 decades later? Did they dream it would reach Australia, Uruguay and then end up back in New Zealand – but also be published in a newspaper and on the internet? I doubt it somehow, after all, the internet wasn’t even a distant dream then.

    As you create work do you have an eye to the future? Do you think about people viewing your work 80 years from now, or publishing it to mass markets in ways we have not even thought of in 2010? Or do you create for now, for the love of it, and without an eye to the future?

    I guess for me the answer is both. I create because I can / must. I create for the joy of it and because I’ve things I can only share with the world through art. I do think about who may see the work, and how it can be shared, but I don’t have a very long-term view. All I can say is that I try to create the works with quality materials that will last, and in ways which don’t in themselves damage the world for future generations (such as being careful with chemicals).

  • Crusade #43: Text Messaging

    Michelle’s challenge for the month over at the GPP Street Team site was to use found text in a page. As always, I was keen to have a go – the Crusades are a good way of trying out new ideas, and being reminded of old ideas you haven’t used in a while. Sort of like digging into the bottom of the tool box…

    As many of you will now, I have a busy life. My pages reflects my desire to be more organised so that I have more creative time, and more time with Tony. These are both goals that came out of our trip to Dubai and Italy. The steps I’ve taken so far have helped, but there’s a long way to go yet. So, here’s my Crusade entry for the month, which is a page in my art journal: