Cath Sheard Art

Tag: abstraction

  • Practising the basics

    It’s always useful to practice basic skills like colour mixing, composition and mark making. I’ve been slowly coming to the realisation that I’ve lost some of my own style, especially in terms of mark making. There’s a couple of reasons for that, which it’s probably not useful to document.

    How to fix it? De-influencing myself through less time watching other artists online. Looking at other artist’s work is fine but, for me anyway, watching them work is often detrimental unless it’s a specific technique I want to learn.

    The other thing I’m doing is practicing the basics by colour mixing, inspired by Sarah Renae Clark’s Colour Cubes, then doing a small piece in those colours, an idea I got from Denise Love. That said, I’m making a conscious effort to use my brush strokes and my marks to ensure the hand of the artist shows.

  • 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.

  • Being in flow

    Creating can be a struggle. Marks look wrong, paint colours don’t sit right, shapes feel awkward – the whole thing feels forced. Ugh!

    Then there’s magic days when my hands, brain & soul are connected, and works come together easily. The more time I spend creating, the more likely I am to be in flow where I intuitively know the next step.

    Is there a down side to being in flow? Not really, except I run out of room, have glue all over my hands and deep blue paint on my pale pink sweatshirt because I forgot to put on my apron!

    Occasionally a non-artist will comment painting must be easy if you finish a piece so quickly. The time spent on an individual piece is a small part of the act of creating. I completed a 4-year Advanced Diploma of Art & Creativity (Honours) in 2008 and have spent countless hours creating since then. I watch art videos, study art books, work on colour mixing, practice my skills. All of that is part of the process of creating every single piece.

    Starting a small mixed media series using paint and hand painted collage papers
    15cm mixed media using paint. & collage
    Working large as the start of a commission piece.

  • 100TinyTreasures

    I’ve been an inconsistent blogger lately. Life seems a bit fragmented and busy. It’s not bad, just different, for all kinds of reasons.

    I’m still doing #100TinyTreasures and have been posting on Bluesky and Facebook, but not here, so it’s catch up time. An impact on any project that inspires consistent practice is, for me anyway, that it reinforces and solidifies the hand of the artist. What marks and shapes do I go back to time after time? What formats and focal areas speak most clearly to me?

    At the weekend I taught a gelli printing class with four artists. They each had an identical pack of papers, access to the same paints, stencils and tools. At the end of two and a half hours there were four completely different sets of gelli prints. The hand of the artist always shows…

  • There’s freedom in collab

    Pen and I have been creating collaborative artwork for years now. We’ve had two exhibitions, shown collab work in multiple gallery exhibitions, sold pieces, taught classes together. We’ve built a huge amount of trust in each other as artists, and in the ability for our relationship to cope with real honesty and our authentic selves.

    Want to write giant black words over something the other did? Do it. Cut a piece into four and make them into a book? Why not! Pour neon pink ink all over something and let it drip. Go for it. We stopped asking permission years ago 😂

    There comes a point, after the pieces have been mailed back and forth between the North to South Islands numerous times, where we start asking if it’s finished. Does it need one more mark, a line, a gold dot? There’s a time when we just know. That time always comes when the pieces are high contrast, richly textured, multi layered.

    Are the collab works like the work we make individually? Yes, and no. There are elements that are absolutely our own. Penny is the queen of “feckn shiny things” and I can’t resist a good drip and some splatter. Penny’s all about rich blues, I love neon pink and orange. The hand of the artists show, but the works are uniquely ours, not mine and hers. It’s a very magical thing and I feel privileged to be creating with someone whose skills complement mine so well.

    The images below are tiny sections out of large works I’ve been adding to tonight. I spent maybe 90 minutes working and used collage, transparent embossing powder, acrylic paint & ink, a green star-filled sparkly paste and a highly textured opaque embossing powder.