Cath Sheard Art

Tag: land

  • Inspired by the land

    Inspired by the land

    At the beginning of May, Alan and I were fortunate to purchase 43 hectares of dairy grazing land. There are flat paddocks, steep hills down to a river, some QEII Trust, forest in pines and native trees, quite a few farm buildings but no house. Alan’s out there every day farming, and I pop out sort of in passing.

    The reality is I work full-time, go to the gym three days a week, and do my art. By the time I’ve done all that, I really don’t have time to farm as well. But for all that, I love seeing the land and knowing we are its caretakers.

    This weekend I decided to make some really small pieces of art as part of a ‘sharing some love & light’ project on BlueSky. I was working really small, 10.5cm square and 10x14cm with watercolour, pencil and NeoColor II crayons. What I realised is the land is very much inspiring what I do even though I’m not there very often.

  • Back to mapping the land

    Mapping the land #2Over the last few months I have been looking at Aboriginal Art, especially works which map the land using an aerial perspective. It fascinates me, but it turns out I find it quite hard to do; the traditional Western viewpoint is so strongly ingrained. You can see my original post about this here, and some unsuccessful attempts here.  

    Yesterday I was having a ‘play’ day – just spending time with paint, stamps, glue etc. I did some mono-prints, some mixed-media collage, a little scrapbooking. A bit of this and a bit of that. I sifted through a few books on my shelf, including some that show the land from above.

    After I had relaxed a bit I pulled out some heavier weight watercolour paper and did some monoprints using a bonded plastic bag I had saved from something-or-other. I started just casually working on top of the monoprint. And there it was – the first attempt at aerial mapping that starts to approach what I had in mind. It feels like I have broken through an unseen barrier.