Cath Sheard Art

Tag: collage

  • Trusting my intuition

    In November I visited the Hokitika Gorge and fell in love with the clear blue water so it quickly became the subject of a joint exhibition I have planned for this November. The works will show the iterative process I use to get to the final works.

    Recently I had the chance to visit the Gorge again. In packing art supplies I chose my basics – Phthalo turquoise, cobalt teal, gold, white Heavy Body Golden acrylics. I kept reaching for Golden Fluid Titan Pale Green – an odd pale green grey beige. Not the colour of the works I’ve been doing at all. I put it away, then got it out again; in the end I decided it was such a small bottle I’d take it with me.

    I started doing small backgrounds before I went back to the Gorge and kept using that colour. My brain was saying it was wrong – my hand, and my intuition – were determined though.

    I stayed with Alan Fowlie, a family friend, and before he took me to the Gorge he warned me the water might not be that amazing blue because of floods 3 weeks prior. Ok, sure. When we got to the gorge and I got my first fresh glimpse of the water I was stunned. Yes, you guessed right … the water was the exact colour I’d been creating.

    Incredible! That’s what happens when I am fully tuned into a subject and immerse myself in creating without overriding my intuition. It’s a lovely place to be, and involves letting go of control.

    Hokitika 1Hokitika 2hokitika 3hokitika 4hokitika may 2019

     

  • The images in my head

    Some of the gelli prints I did yesterday *needed* me to do some more work on them 😉

    I’m using hand painted papers as collage materials  to add circles. I suspect they echo the rocks I saw at Hokitika Gorge but I’m not sure. That’s the thing with my art process – it’s intuitive and iterative. The first few tentative works in a series and the final pieces are often worlds apart and, for many people, the final works have little or no relation to the initial inspiration. And I’m totally ok with that.

    The collaged shapes are very specific. I have quite large sheets of randomly painted papers and when I cut a shape it is carefully chosen for the colours. Then I test the shape on the base work and sometimes trim a millimeter or two off here and there, more than once, before it feels right!

    What I know of this Hokitika series is there’s some distinct colours, lines and shapes that are appearing over and over again. I’m still working quite small – these are about 6″ square – but will work bigger eventually.

    gelli hokitika gorge 20190311 agelli hokitika gorge 20190311 b

     

  • The art in my head

    In November I spent a few days in Greymouth and Hokitika, and visited Hokitika Gorge. The shapes and colours have invaded my mind & are appearing in my art.

    When I did my final (4th) year at The Learning Connection a few strong marks emerged, including a sort of curved power pole with a cross beam, normally in cream. (I can’t find an image of these works anywhere)

    I’m finding those marks have reappeared in a new form – this time as a cross with some tiny hatchmarks near it, a cross and some hatchmarks inside a circle, and a curved pair of parallel lines with a cross beam. The circle / oval are featuring too, and are fairly new to me in terms of consistent use.

    I’ve shown below some works from 2008, and some of the new works I’ve been doing, which are gelli prints as a base with mark making in subsequent layers. Looking at these, the connection between the 2008 marks, and today’s marks, isn’t as obvious as I thought it would be … 

    (in other news, I think my scanner glass needs a good clean)

    2008 work
    2008 work

    West Coast V.jpg

  • cjs18 the month that was…

    This is the third time I’ve done #cjs (or 4th?). I love it – it gets my year off to an arty start, teaches me new processes and techniques, and I get to meet and reconnect with amazing artists from all over the globe. Fantastic! Huge thanks to Nathalie Kalbach for bringing it altogether. It’s well priced, and you can download the videos and refer back to them all year-long. Here’s a look back at the pages I did each day in January; some things I won’t do again, or seldom anyway, other techniques and processes will become part of my current art journal practice.

  • cjs18 day 31 Finnabair

    I love Finnabair‘s work but it’s not my style, so I took some of her recipe and made it my own, which is a good way to work anyway. I’m still using old photos belonging to Tony’s cousin Alison – she has dementia and no longer remembers the people and places, so using them in my art gives them some new meaning. This is the last day of cjs18; I’ll do a wrap-up post shortly.

    day 31 finnabair