Cath Sheard Art

Tag: exhibition

  • New exhibition & mental health

    I’m excited to be exhibiting with Eltham artist Dimmie Danielewski during this year’s Arts Fest 2018. As part of this new body of work, I have changed my bio to read:

    New Zealand mixed media artist Cath Sheard’s work bring a lightness to, and shines light on, the often-untold stories of women. By focusing on topics such as anxiety, chronic illness, and sexual violence the artist hopes to open up a safe space for discussion. Her work also records memories, especially of the landscape of her youth, as well as her internal dialogue.

    The new bio feels right to me; my work has changed in the last few years and my bio didn’t really capture that. The idea of bringing lightness to a subject, while shining a light on hard stuff, is increasingly important to me.

    I said in my last post that I had decided to go to counselling to continue the healing journey. I started counselling last week; I like Shanti and feel we have come up with a good plan. Basically, she works on getting people sleeping well first, so their mind starts to relax and heal, then formulate a sentence that captures one thing to work on, and teaches the tools needed to keep repeating the process.

    Shanti and I talked about some of the issues I’d discussed with the weight loss psychologist. I’m realising I can’t even identify some emotions, and certainly don’t express them, nor am I good at saying what I want outside of work. We think my first sentence to work on will be something like “I am able to identify my emotions and verbalise my feelings and wants”. As she said, that alone will make a huge change to my life.

    I’m always quite open and honest on my blog but even I am going to redact a bit, mainly to protect other people because I can’t tell some stories without impacting their privacy too. What I am discovering is how much unsolved stuff is in my head – things like the miscarriages, but also things from my youth, sexual & emotional abuse and stuff from my first marriage. Issues that should have been sorted decades ago … so now it’s time to get it done.

     I’m fine – there’s no crisis, but it is stuff I need to work through. I think it’s important we talk about our mental health otherwise the stigma will never go away. I have cut back my time online, especially Twitter where it can be quite political and intense, while I look after myself.

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  • A bit of art and some news

    First of all, the bit of art. I’ve done this week’s CMP2018 and another page in my favourite Dina Wakley journal using Tony’s cousin Alison’s photos. She has no memories attached to them any more and we don’t know their history either, but at least this way they have some ongoing meaning (if only to Tony and I). 

    The other news is that a local artist and I are going to have a joint exhibition during ArtsFest in November, hopefully in Eltham. The other artist is @_dimmie_ on Twitter – you can see some of her work here. I’m very excited and have started planning a new body of work.

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  • New Legato work finished

    This commemorates my Mother’s birth father, Fred McKenna. Sadly, Mum never knew him, but in later life got to know her half-sisters. One of them, Margaret, provided some photos and information so I could make this piece of work, which is going to Italy later this year for the 2014 Legato exhibition in Cassino. Fred served in WWI and this year’s Legato is the ideal place to honour the grandfather I never knew.

    I have been working on this piece for days; it’s 18×24″ on stretched canvas. I haven’t varnished it yet, just in case; there’s one small spot that might get adjusted yet. I have photographed the entire piece, and then there’s some close-up shots to show the details and layers. 

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  • Trusting myself to paint

    The piece I’m working on was looking quite ‘pretty’ but I knew it needed an ancient wall. This meant trusting my instinct and being prepared to act – something I have been not so good at in recent times. with my art This afternoon I took a deep breath, made a mask, grabbed some brown and black inks and started making an ancient wall right over the top of the some of the prettiness. It feels good to be trusting myself to grab paint and go for gold. Here are some detail shots (in reverse order – oops)

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  • More progress – details

    Here’s some late afternoon shots showing the progress in wee patches of detail. The layers now include very dilute fluid acrylics, heavy body acrylic and spray inks.

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