Cath Sheard Art

Tag: painting

  • Exhibition coming up

    The annual Pocket Rockets exhibition opens shortly in Dunedin. As always, artist Tanya Dann has done a great job of organising it all, and has her first solo exhibition happening at the same time. And, just so she doesn’t get bored, she’s a PhD student as well. I’m sending six works down, including 3 that I have only just finished. Normally I send work from one series, but this time something tells me to send a range of work down, so that’s what I have done. Pocket Rockets is a great chance for people to buy original artworks as Christmas gifts.

    Memories of Bryce Canyon. Acrylic, 12×12″. C Sheard, c2012.
    One of those days. Mixed media, 10×10″. C Sheard, c2012.
    I’m gonna make it. Mixed media, 10×10″. C Sheard, c2012.

  • Fractured earth

    A couple of posts back I mentioned that I wanted to do a new painting for our kitchen, which is mainly a medium cream color, with deep grey bench tops. The last painting was a darkish moon painting, which I really like, but I felt the kitchen needed a lift. I stuck to mainly transparent Golden Fluid acrylics plus some black, and here’s the result:

  • What I’m reading

     

    I’m finding this more academic than I expected but loving it all the same. I’m particularly taken with the Wolf Kahn and Hans Hoffman works, and some of the gentler abstract expressionist works.  I sometimes forget what a profound impact colour has on me though. I read this till about 10pm then spent half the night with possible paintings dancing in front of me, and vivid colour schemes making my brain as far from relaxed as I could possibly get!

    I’m wanting to do a new, large-scale, painting for our kitchen and am thinking about really strong colours along the lines of those used on the book’s cover. I might even work in pastels instead of acrylics for a change. We’ll see … I need some peaceful sleep first though.

     

  • Making signatures

    I’ve starting making trial signatures for a swap I’m involved in. We each make 11 sets of signatures, and send off by the 20th Sept, and signatures back from a variety of amazing artists. You can see more about it here.

    I have been playing with some quite heavy watercolour paper, and have decided it is a bit *too* heavy. The other day I ordered some lovely paper from Gordon Harris, and I’m going to have a play with those tomorrow. I’ve got some mixed media paper, rice paper, watercolour paper and one other – escapes me for the moment just what it was. So far I have stuck with black, white and red, and have been using foam stamps, old credit cards, a spray bottle, stencils and marker pens. The mark making is too dark for the look I want; tomorrow’s lot will be a bit less obvious. Here’s what I have been doing so far:

     

  • Italy on my mind

    Our Italy trip has been on my mind a lot lately, for all kinds of obscure and tangential reasons. Things like the financial woes in Europe, the realization that Tony and I probably won’t be going overseas again, seeing some poppies growing locally, graffiti that reminds me of the trains in Italy…

    I’ve been wanting to start a new series of paintings, using mainly black and white with a little red, and over the last few nights have dreamed these into existence. As I start painting Tony often asks, partly to wind me up, “what’s it going to be?”. He kept coming and looking at these three, a bit baffled. When I had finished he said “poppies”. Yup – but think of the viaduct, and the train tracks. Oh yeah, you have the graffiti underneath, and the old roman viaduct. Yes, Tony, I do!