Cath Sheard Art

Category: Uncategorized

  • Why do collage?

    Sometimes I see people online asking what the point of collage is if you’re “not going to do anything with it”.

    For many creatives the joy is in creating, rather than the final result. Moving our hands, and quieting our brains, is good for us and even more important when the world feels difficult.

    I believe the hand of the artist always shows. Creating collages without too much thinking helps uncover developing interests, common threads, new directions and shapes that are calling to us.

    I made four small collages this afternoon – I think the journal is 6×6”. When I look at them it’s obvious to me one was overly influenced by some printed tissue paper that was lying around. The hand painted papers feel right by the composition doesn’t sit comfortably for me.

    The other three sit together, and show the hand of the artist. There are consistent shapes which regularly show up in my work, mixed with a shape that’s still emerging, and some colour schemes I’ve been exploring.

    Will I do anything with this information? In a formal sense, no. But it’ll sit in the back of my mind and over time some of it may become part of my new art language. We’ll see…

  • Art, craft, and a little bit of stretch

    I’m an artist, and also a crafter – for me there’s considerable overlap between the two. What I learn from crafting informs my art, and vice versa. With both, there are times when I need to stretch myself a bit, because it’s easy to get too comfortable.

    Last week was a LOT. Monday night I was at A&E with my best friend until after 3am. Alan and I had a couple of disturbed nights for no obvious reason. Thursday and Friday I was dealing with a weather event at work, with my emergency management hat on. By the end of the week I was shattered.

    Saturday I took Tony out for brunch, and have spent the rest of the weekend puddling round, doing art and craft. I’ve been stamping out lots of Dina Wakley stamps onto tissue then cutting them out while we watch tv in the evening.

    I have been working on a collab Penny and I are doing. It’s a 9m x 19cm roll of Awagami washi paper. It’s fun to work on, and the paper is surprisingly strong, but hard to handle because of the length. It’s currently hanging over my art room door to dry,

    While Alan was away I had painted a deer standing in the bush on a 12×12 panel. Very definitely not my usual style and I said at the time I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork than do another one. It was a gift made with love.

    Never say never! I decided to do another deer, this time on a full size (50x75cm?) sheet of pastel paper. Why am I doing it? Because it stretches me artistically and makes me think differently. It’s good for my art practice to do something that is well outside my usual wheelhouse.

    Progress on a larger scale deer
    Working on a 9m washi roll collab with Penny
    The joy of sitting quietly cutting things out

  • The gap between vision & reality

    At the weekend Pen Kirk and I taught a couple of classes in Greymouth, including a gelli printing one with Abi Gully. It was great fun and I meet some new local artists.

    I asked one full time artist how it feels when something doesn’t turn out as expected. She said she’s fortunate that things always work out as envisioned. What a great position to be in!

    That’s definitely not my experience. I’ve talked before about days when I’m ‘in flow’ and the art happens instinctively, and the days when everything is a struggle.

    Yesterday was a struggle – what was in my head, and what appeared on paper, was a mismatch. Why? It’s usually because I’m making a change in style, colour palette, shapes or even substrate.

    Does it matter? No. It’s frustrating at the time but often leads to a breakthrough. The key is to just keep going. Below are four of the pieces I started yesterday that I’m going to try and fix today.

  • In pursuit of

    There are forms and marks I come back to over and over. Sometimes a new mark appears; often I don’t know what the shape or mark represents. I might have to play with it for months before I have an “aha!” moment.

    A cave-like shape is one that has been appearing in my art for years. It varies in form, from an actual cave, to a series of overlapping lines … but the general idea remains.

    It took me years to realise it refers to the old ‘cave beach’ island at Waverley Beach. When I was a kid we used to spend summer there in a caravan, and later on Mum & Dad bought a beach bach. Dad would come down after work, and weekends – we’d fish off the sea side of the island.

    Dad’s good friend Ian had seven children. They would visit and, as we all got older, often stay. We used to climb onto the island and dive off the far left side into the waves, then climb back up the slippery papa rock (soft mudstone) to dive again. The more we dived, the wetter the slope got, and it became increasingly slippery. Looking back, it wasn’t the safest thing ever!

    I’ve been playing on some cheap postcard sized watercolour paper, just letting my hands work without thinking of the outcome. The photos below are quick night photos on my phone, but show what I did in one evening, and the theme is clear!

    This was taken in the early 2000s. The island doesn’t exist in this form any more, but shows what is was like when I was young.

  • Being true to yourself

    I have entered the Awagami International Miniature Print Exhibition in Japan. Prints have to be on A4 washi paper. I made a few prints on copier paper to get used to the size, then swapped to washi. I loved the first prints but keep going for another two or three weeks because “it needs to be my best print”.

    I ended up with around 35 prints, and 25 of those were worth considering. I laid them out on the floor and quickly got down to 10, then 6. I showed them on Facebook and Bluesky, and people told me their top pick.

    So did I package up the one that got the most votes? No, far from it. I need to send the worth that speaks to me, and that represents my art, and that’s the only criteria that matters aside from the regulations. The piece I chose was one of the very first I did. I should have know that fiddling around would not be helpful!