I touched on this here, and spelling it out will help me have clarity. In 2026, my art goals are:
As I play in my small Fabriano art journal, with zero expectations, I can see a change happening. I’ve got the urge to complete the shapes, replicate colours and patterns. This isn’t what I normally do, so I’m going with it to see what happens. It’s most likely a step on the way to something else. It doesn’t feel like something I’d pursue in its own right.
I am rediscovering parts of my art practice after 5 years of decreasing art time due to Tony’s poor health. People assume, when a loved one goes into a rest home, the one left at home has a normal life again, but that’s far from the truth.
I used to do a lot of collage but had gradually all but stopped, except in mixed media. Yet collage is a low stress, low cost way of training your eye and brain to recognise what you love to see, and love to create. It’s a useful tool, but it’s also just good fun … not everything has to have an end goal.
I’ve also realised, probably due to time pressure, I was only creating landscape focussed pieces in my art journals. I haven’t been exploring shape and composition, or mark making, for its own sake.
Today I played and it felt good to be going back to a more holistic art practice. I’m seriously considering putting my Felt shop on hold after Christmas and spending the year concentrating on refilling my art cup to see where it leads in terms of work I make.
It’s always useful to practice basic skills like colour mixing, composition and mark making. I’ve been slowly coming to the realisation that I’ve lost some of my own style, especially in terms of mark making. There’s a couple of reasons for that, which it’s probably not useful to document.
How to fix it? De-influencing myself through less time watching other artists online. Looking at other artist’s work is fine but, for me anyway, watching them work is often detrimental unless it’s a specific technique I want to learn.
The other thing I’m doing is practicing the basics by colour mixing, inspired by Sarah Renae Clark’s Colour Cubes, then doing a small piece in those colours, an idea I got from Denise Love. That said, I’m making a conscious effort to use my brush strokes and my marks to ensure the hand of the artist shows.
In my last blog post I said I was pleasantly surprised by the desire to create so soon after Tony’s death. I’m still creating, taking it gently but feeling good about it.
People ask how I am … I’m ok. Am I great? No, but it’d be a bit weird if I was. I describe it as appropriately sad. The sadness comes and goes – after 33 years together, and all the years of slowly losing Tony, that feels ok.
So I’m being kind to myself and creating with low expectations, doing what I feel like in the moment. I’m feeling inspired by Welsh castles, a theme I return to semi-regularly, often accompanied by masts, swords and what’s probably blood. It is what it is…
In these current works, which are about A3 size, it feels important to work in overlapping layers. Why? I don’t know yet, but I’m happy to trust the process.
Cath Sheard Art 