Cath Sheard Art

Tag: abstraction

  • Sea Pinks

    Over the last week or two my small art journal, where I work out ideas, has been inundated with bright greens or greenish yellows. There’s a lot of hot pink, sometimes on the horizon line or cliff edge, or scattered in the landscape.

    Sandra was looking at my art journal, went off for a few minutes, and came back to show me Sea Pink (Thrift) on to coast of Wales – and they flower in Ireland too. And there’s the answer…much of what I paint is based on memories of the landscape. Mum’s birth mother Angela was Irish; somewhere in my DNA the memory exists of the Sea Pinks flowering in the landscape.

    That might sound far fetched, but think about this. People with Scottish ancestry often feel an affinity with the bagpipes even if they don’t know they have Scottish heritage. They’ll say it is like they know the music from the first time they hear it. Why? Because it’s wired into their ancestral memory, or however you want to describe it. Of course there are examples from all over the world, from all cultures.

    Have I been to Ireland and seen the Sea Pinks in flower? No. Does my soul, my shared ancestral memories, know them? I think so. I’d love to know if Angela liked them.

  • It’s all about texture

    When I was at The Learning Connection my tutor, in the 4th year, commented that my work was “all about the edges”. Peter was absolutely right, and the edges of the work are still critical to me. In the last couple of years I’ve become increasingly interested in the idea of texture, while keeping the work very flat. When I was a scrapbooker, and scrapbook tutor, I could never get into lumpy things on my pages…

    Pen Kirk and I are working on our next exhibition, titled Shattered Landscapes which opens late October. We’re showing our own work, and joint collaborative works. I’ve been working on a few pieces this afternoon and I’ve been quite focused on creating a sense of texture.

  • It might be masts!

    Lately my art has taken a distinct change in direction. I worked my way very quickly through two art journals, using water soluble pencil, paint and collage. At one point I even said to my good friend, and fellow artist, PenKirk https://www.facebook.com/halfpennynz that I needed to “step away from the journal”! I didn’t of course, I just kept creating.

    About three quarters of the way through the first journal I realised the shape I was trying to create, over and over, was the island at Waverley Beach. It’s very different today; time, tide and climate change have destroyed most of it.

    Dad used to fish off the far side of the island. My friends and I would climb up the side and dive into the waves. Then, dripping wet, we’d clamber back up the papa rock and do it all over again. Looking back, I realise we could easily have been hurt because papa rock gets very slippery when it’s wet. We didn’t get hurt, but we did have a lot of fun.

    I’ve been doing a lot more mark making, using water soluble media. There’s a shape that keeps appearing and I’m not sure what it is yet. I seem to be using a lot of blue, deep green and white. I’m starting to wonder if the lines are masts. If it turns out they are masts, I’ve no idea where the imagery is coming from.

    At The Learning Connexion I did a lot of mark making, particularly in my 4th year, and still do in my art journals, but over recent years haven’t done as much in art pieces. I’m not sure what’s made the difference, perhaps some of the artists I’ve watched on YouTube including Jackie Schomburg https://www.youtube.com/@jackieschomburgart/about, but I’ve gone full circle and am doing a lot of mark making and drawing.

    Where’s all this leading? Goodness knows, but I’m enjoying the process and trust there will be an “aha! So that’s what I’ve been trying to get out of my head “ moment.

    This is one of the pieces I did before I got to the final shape of the island at Waverley Beach.
    This is an example of where I’ve started with water soluble pencil and a wandering line.
    Playing with mark making. The strong vertical line on the right is the start of the more mast-like lines.
    This is the very recent piece that has me thinking sea and mast … maybe! If it is, I don’t know where the mast comes from in my memory, but I guarantee it will be a memory.

  • Low tack tape is magic!

    I often use low tack tape around the edges of Fabriano Mixed Media paper then tape it into quarters. I work across the four quadrants as though it’s one sheet, starting with pencil marks, collage, and paint.

    If I work towards a finished image too quickly the work feels stiff and boring. That happened today so I grabbed some Dina Wakley acrylic gloss spray and put puddles onto the sheets of paper, moving it around with a brush or just tipping the sheet.

    I lost my grip on the bottle and poured quite a lot of Tangerine onto one sheet. Eek! I tipped it around a bit, then used a paper towel to mop some up. I thought it was probably a goner, and would end up being cut into pieces for collage.

    But there’s something magic about clean white edges; works that seem blah can suddenly look amazing. I pulled the tape of the 5 large sheets tonight and – go figure – the one with the Tangerine spill is stunning.

    In the photos, the one with the mauve tape still in place is a truer colour, the second is done on my scanner which doesn’t capture colour well.

  • Working in series – class prep

    I’m teaching a class in Greymouth in early December about working in series, for abstracts and/or landscape abstracts. The class packs have been put together, and the classnotes printed out. The class is on Thursday 5 December, 7-9.30pm at CoRe. Book by emailing leftbankwestcoast@gmail.com or phoning 03 768 0038.

    Here’s a sneak peek of the process we’ll be following!