Cath Sheard Art

Tag: collab

  • 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

  • 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.