Cath Sheard Art

Tag: painting

  • The works – thinking about colour

    After my last post Margaret made these comments “Coming from a place where the grayness of the days often sets the colour schemes I use in my own work, I find the vibrancy of colour in yours quite a contrast. I’d love to hear a little more about how you go about choosing your colour schemes. E.g., are the colours vibrant because of the emotionality you feel about the topic/place.? I love the boldness of the purple/ green combination.”  Thanks Margaret, it’s lovely to hear from you and know that you took time out to really look.

    I guess the first thing I’d say re the colours is they’re a reflection of where I live. A lot of New Zealand tourism marketing is based on slogans such as “100% pure” and certainly where I live that’s true. The air is very clean and clear and as a result colours are clear as well. Grass is green, the sly is blue, the cows are black and white or vivid iron oxide red.

    I think the colours are also a reflection of my feelings about the Freezing Works themselves, and where I live generally. Patea is a poor, rural, low socio-economic town that knows hard times personally. In some ways it is not always an easy community to live in. The derelict works are ugly, just as the closure was ugly. But I love both of them; the town and the ruins. Being raised here was good for me, coming back here almost 20 years ago now was also good for me. Living here gives me the chance to work full time, be an artist, publish a newspaper, care for Mum and still be happy – try that in the city!

    I am using what is, for me anyway, a limited colours selection – mainly to help tie the individual works together a bit more. Sitting on my desk I have Naples yellow, permanent green light, brilliant orange, transparent yellow, titanium white, phthalo blue (green), manganese blue, quinacridone magenta, permanent violet dark, quinacridone violet, ultramarine violet, and phthalo green (yellow). I chose this colour set, ok two sets really, after doing some of the colour exercises from Nita Leland’s Confident Colour book.

    It’s been interesting to try to explain a bit about the colours; I may end up coming back to this later on. In the meantime …the photos (taken at night wiht  aflash, so dodgy colour) this time show some of the detail from a painting I am working on at the moment. Hopefully you can see that there is a reasonable amount of texture going on. I like my marks to show, to leave traces of what I  have done and how I got there.

  • Patea Freezing Works paintings – Ruined II

    Here is the second in the series of works based on the derelict Patea Freezing Works. The works closed in 1982 and that closure had a huge impact on the town. I know from personal experience; my dad owned a grocery store and the closure changed Mum and Dad’s lives forever. They owned the building, as well as they actual business, and had always seen the property as their retirement plan – but of course after the closure the building was pretty much worthless. Many people walked away form their homes, others sold them for a few hundred dollars, while a few daring souls packed their bags and moved their houses with them.

    Time has moved on and the works have sat unused for 20 plus years. Time itself, and the work of vandals and copper thieves, has impacted on the structures and they had become quite unsafe. Then in February 2008 someone set fire to the works, but more on that in another post. The freezing works buildings are being demolished even as I type. The whole demolition process will take 6 months, and I’m taking photos throughout that time.

    Speaking of photos, my thanks to local photographer Phu Tran, whose work can be seen here. He has graciously agreed to let me use his freezing works images as reference material for some paintings. I am deeply grateful for his generosity, and in awe of his ability with a camera.

    This work, as with the previous one, is 16×16″ in acrylics on gallery wrap canvas. It is based on my memory of how the land and the buildings have combined over time as the buildings have eroded – they have become one, with the buildings sinking back into the earth, and the grasses and trees growing up through the ruins. Ruined II

  • Patea Freezing Works paintings – Derelict XI

    A couple of months back I withdrew all my works from my website, Etsy etc while I thought long and hard about the direction my work was going. My intention was to come up with a body of work that sat well together, that I could show as a whole, and that all said “she painted it”. I took the advice of a good friend whose work and business ethic I admire, did lots of research, immersed my self in the subject and then got painting.

    And I am happy! I have done 6 works so far, with four more almost done. I set myself a standard size, a limited number of colours, and an overall style. It’s amazing how much freedom I have felt with those boundaries in place, because it lets me be very free in other ways but still know they will ‘hang together’.

    I think  for me there are two really pleasing outcomes from all this work. The first is that the works do all look like one person did them – I can see my own style in them. The second, and most important thing in a personal sense, is related to that. These feel far more true to what I really what to paint, and how I like to make marks, than all the works I have done in the last 18 months or so. I am not sure why this is, but I am glad it is.

    So, here is the first of the series. I’d love to hear what you think.

    Oh, and here’s where I am at with writing an artist statement to go with them: The Patea landscape, both seen and remembered, is the starting point for my current work, especially the derelict Freezing Works which is being dismantled even as I paint it. These works explore the boundary between reality and abstraction; the colours are an expression of my feelings about a place or a moment in time. The Freezing Works was a multi-layered environment, built over many years and in many geographic directions, and in the same way the paintings are layered with marks made by scraping, wiping, dripping and pushing the paint around until the surface matches the memory.Derelict XI

  • Odd and ends in our house

    Well, Christmas is over, I have a few days holiday left, and it’s raining so, yes, I have been painting hard out. I should have some work to show you tomorrow as I have 3 40cm square canvas all but finished. Initially things weren’t going so well with them, but once I realised the problem was I had other people’s work in mind, not my own, the problem vanished! People worry about artists copying their work but I couldn’t if I tried. Seeing other might influence me, but once I pick up my mark making tools it is *me* that comes out on that canvas each and every time.

    Today I purchased Alyson Stanfield’s book The relatively pain-free artist statement – you can read about Alyson here.  Why? As I mentioned a while back, I have started on a new body of work; it’s quite different from what I have done before and I want to market it well. That means writing and talking about it, so I figured the advice of a professional was warranted. I’ll be working through the book starting tomorrow, and will let you know how it’s going.

    When I’m not painting I’ve been busy with Mum as the chest infection I gave her sprang back to life as soon as she finished the antibiotics. I think since she had pneumonia in the middle of the year she’s been a bit more susceptible. Here’s what our dog Faith had to say about it today:

    Today I have been relaxing on Grandma’s knee, on the mohair rug in 26 degree heat, cos Grandma’s been sick. Mum went to the hospital with her the other night and waited 4 hours – she was a bit cross when she got home. But not very cross, cos she says sometimes it has been Grandma that makes the doctors and nurses run late, so fair’s fair.
    Grandma has a chest infection, but the staff kept asking about the big bruise on her arm – and Grandma couldn’t remember how it happened. When we got home Mum and Grandma were laughing, saying that a this rate the Police will be round any day to accuse Mum of beating up Grandma.

  • Feeling better, doing more layers

    Having passed my chest infection on to my husband (remember marriage vows – for better or worse – this is worse) and my mother (blast! at 85, it’s not a good thing) – I’m feeling a bit better. Although the house still sounds a bit like a TB ward really. Now that I have my coughing under control, and a wee bit of energy back, I need to get creating. The longer I don’t create anything, the worse I feel and the harder it is to get going again. I am sure many of you know exactly what I mean. So today I have been playing with this idea again:

    I’ve taken one of the two large backgrounds and added some transparent freezing works imagery over the top. I want to print this out at roughly A3 size then work back over the top in oil stick and charcoal. I had already done one, and was pleased with it, so some more will help me decide if this is the path to follow or not.