nice week for selling work!…

been a very nice week for selling work. valeska gert has gone, or rather, will go in the summer, possibly sooner if don’t need her for a couple of other exhibitions in 2015. also,’y droed/the foot’, the drawing of suzie’s clogged dancing feet…so, people DO buy large drawings!

nice to be over a nasty bug, laid low energy for a couple of weeks…but…limbs are back, energy got me going to quakers’ at 7.30am this morning, lovely to be back. cai texted me a score to work from. great way of working.recorded some useful vocal sounds and long sounds.vowels changing and morphing, becoming very harsh…ideal eerie! on flute too….long breath control..nice to work on. i ran and ran, round and round..fabulous feeling, if only i could run barefoot on the roads without wimping out every time i trod a chipping.
been a lovely time in the studio on thursday. had a yen for twigs all week after a discussion with iwan regarding the gert painting. drove away out of town on wednesday and eventually pulled up at the side of the lane up and above llandre church. got great twigs and branches and some weeds. wound some together and sprayed them. made patterns on card with twig sprayed sihouettes. this lead to me making quick card sculptures. one pale pink and one pale purple one, slightly different shapes but am quite interested in seeing how a few more look next week. it’ll be add a sculpture assemblage.just before i left decided to try a large drawing in charcoal. i had an idea of painting half people or physically cut in half,disjointed people. i wanted a woman with twigs/branches as the torso. well, it’ll do as a sketch, but really got me thinking…will call the painting ‘burning rain’ .must stop, very tired, photos tomorrow…what a blog!!!!

german dancer. actress, valeska gert…will need to photograph this in good daylight though this thursday, to make full use of the fluorescent yellow making purple on the white gessoed parts of the canvas…

‘o ble, i ble…pwy?’/where from, where to…who?’
acrylic, gesso, charcoal, canvas, 5’2″ X 6’3″…

as i don’t get to my studio in carmarthen more than a day, possibly two a week, it took me two weeks to actually stretch and gesso this beautiful, large canvas. for the past few weeks i have been drawing and contemplating some of the photos of valeska gert in the book i ordered from dreaded amazon, having seen some of the photos on thomas kampe’s fb page. thomas is a dancer/ choreographer/teacher/ and feldenkrais practitioner, amongst many other things!so thank you thomas, for putting up these photos. she reminded me of me!

i have so far stuck to my guns and kept her very strikingly simple. i painted over the charcoal lines with acrylic. this seizes the charcoal without loosing its character. i intended last week, to make a triptych. that’s a lot of big canvas though! will discuss this with iwan on thursday.need to read!!!!!suzi gablik, amongst many others…cracking stuff. write about that later.

some views of my solo exhibition ‘portreadau/patrymau/portraits/patterns’ at the Morlan Centre, Aberystwyth…

‘santes simona o fadrid, fedru di achub ni?/saint simona of madrid, can you save us?’
acrylic, charcoal on canvas

‘inside looking out’ in foreground, ‘mae angen achub y byd/ we need to save the world and ‘vector joy’

i did get to finish hanging the exhibition by about 6.30pm on November 12th, with the help of wonderful jim goodband! thank you again jim!
had a fair bit of trouble with my large charcoal drawings. i should have just used the bulldog clips in the first place! .instead, jim tried some complicated combinations of wood, pva and wire…and a bit of damage to the paper. so, by today, i scalpelled away at the pva and paper which he’d used to keep the wooden baton from bending the paper. unfortunately sliced through the paper at one point on the portrait of meri wells, however, with a damp cloth and some masking tape to keep the sliced paper together…sort of acce[table! hey ho! next time i’ll just do what i intended in the first place and use the bulldog clips or possibly…work smaller!!! now, that’s a revolutionary concept for me…can i follow through. i really, really should do this! all told, the exhibition is being well received and the scale of the large pieces really do make the space even larger. it’ll be wonderful if the morlan can eventually get a grant to supply the gallery space with an appropriate lighting system. it’s a great centre and all sorts and all ages use the building daily. a great place to have some art for people to witness.

eve of hanging my solo exhibition…’portreadau/patrymau/portraits/patterns… at Morlan Centre, Aberystwyth

life seems seamlessly, endlessly full of deadlines, books to read, paintings to paint, sounds to record, a body to keep moving, a body to keep supple, a flute to be practised, writing to be written, in Welsh, in English, in my show book, in my studio practice book, my blogs, on facebook pages, on websites…anything else!? oh yes…and piano to be played, songs to be written, petitions to be signed and artist statements to be thought about and written and catalogues to be listed and priced and i’m hoping the weather will be clement enough this saturday so that i can be filmed walking into the sea wearing a black coat and the second time wearing a life-jacket only. i can only think that the coat probably won’t keep me any warmer than my skin..ah so. all in the name of art-making. to add to my little life practices i want to be able to film/edit and do the sound and music for my videos. all working well together for the moment though.i’m hoping i’ll have some stills if not video for the blog come the weekend. the more i say i’m doing it, i’m nearly in that lovely, cool ,inviting, mid-november water! water is my theme for my one-woman show, ‘dwr’ in welsh. however, to spell ‘dwr’ correctly i need a little upside-down v over the w.hell on earth to find it on apple. this is where my old fujitsu/siemens comes in a treat. easy…go to symbols and there it is!!!that’s something seriously small and enormous all at once that i ‘HAVE GOT TO FIX’in my apple typing. right, have to read now. back to to the wondrous suzi gablik…1991…so pertinent then so crushingly ironic that the world is 14 years down the road in a mightier worse condition!!!i’ve even gone vegan to feel a little better about my place in the world!so, late start tomorrow, 9.30am to start hanging the show and then i may go up to the arts centre to see whether i’ll take part in the saturday ‘response’ time with sandy bendelow’s crew, to the current exhibition up there. see when i finish. have been working on lots of overtones and harmonics on the flute today just in case i find the time.

been wildly busy for last month or so, starting the MA course at Trinity St David in Carmarthen, getting work done for my solo show opening on November 12th at the Morlan Centre in Aberystwyth. writing, reading…lots of food for thought, particularly Naomi Klein’s ‘this changes everything, capitalism vs the climate’…there we are , no more need be said there. add russell brand’s book, ‘reevolution’…yes, revolution, but i can’t do the clever backwards font with love in the middle of the word… on top of that and i’m fired up to join his revolution. anyway, have also been flute practising, body moving, show continuing writing and fishing far and wide for information and every spare second continuing to read. am way behind loading up pics, but for tonight, have had enough am am going to read. i will , by December i hope, be able to upload a tiny few seconds of video with sound track that i’m learning how to do so i can prepare footage for my one woman show next year.all i need are fifty hour days and all good i think!

Beepwales 2014 opening…let me think about that…

enjoyed seeing the beepwales show on friday. however, nothing beats space and usually, though not neccessarily, white walls. i realize they need to enable as many as possible to show and they’ve done a wonderful job again this time. i look forward to seeing the online catalogue, though painting always suffers in reproduction.

‘mae’n canu fel cana’r aderyn/she sings like a bird…portrait of sue jones-davies…and more readingof naomi klein, capitalism versus the climate/ this changes everything…

i think i’m done with this portrait now. i had considered some very white stockings but no, i like the blank leg instead. i’ve spent the day reading naomi klein’s ‘this changes everything, capitalism versus the climate’…it’s been a steady build of two years or more of climate change angst and ensuing build up of feeling useless and unable to actively do anything about global warming apart from using my own carrier bag and wear my t-shirts for four days before washing. small things, big head change though. as i read the book i feel certainly more able to do a lot more little things. i’ve at last actually joined greenpeace and my daily petitioning on facebook continues. however, i have lucked upon reading somewhere how tony abott got rid of the government’s climate council in australia, the day he got into power. the climate council, in order to survive, regrouped as a charitable organization, crowd-funded basically and lo and behold, what a bloody good group. straight facts, no messing and a clear stance on how to get the message across to people that we are IN climate change, it’s not going to happen, it’s happened big-time and continues to happen now and most importantly suggests what anyone can do to become a positive climate activist. clearly, no government is going to turn down profits from fossil fuels, so it’s up to the individual to join groups and petition and demonstrate. i found the aberystwyth anti-fracking group online today. proud of myself!unfortunately, as i have an exhibition opening in swansea on friday i can’t get to the cardiff anti-fracking demonstration on saturday.
perhaps some of you may be asking what has this to do with art. climate change is everyone’s backdrop now.
whatever art i produce is going to be fired by my understanding of where we are currently as far as the climate is affecting the world. it’s going to be very interesting to see whether i keep my activism separate from my painting/performing…i do feel that my one-woman show will refer to it.very strange and very weird to have to write in these terms.

MA underway, post-rehearsals in London with Cai Tomos and Suzie’s portrait, day 1…

seems a long time since doing my show at MOMA, but i’ve continued with flute and keeping the body work going and at last, the long, warm climate-changed September has rolled into October, the world lurches on from one dark moment to the next and occasionally wonderful stuff happens, as it does. had a couple of days working with Cai at Chisenhale. continuing with water and working movement in relation to it.water and climate change working hand in hand and i will try, on the MA and for the show to work, bearing that in mind and see how i might use my awareness of it directly, indirectly or not as the case might be. it seems impossible for me not to relate to it constantly psychologically and intellectually so i can’t imagine i’ll be pushing ideas further without incorporating my thinking about climate change.
weirdly, at 7.30pm on friday, a lady knocked on my door. she was doing a MORI poll regarding climate change!at last, i feel almost relieved that something formal is happening in some part of society if not generally. i gave her 30 minutes of my time. very weird indeed to be answering a poll questionaire on the demise of planet earth!
meanwhile, having been to london and back and come to in aberystwyth for a day i was down in carmarthen on thursday last week and starting my MA. amazing little gem of a place in the welsh countryside.the complete opposite to london but a whole world of creativity there. was given a fab little studio corner, nice group of about 11 all told i think. good cross-section of ages and disciplines. interesting times! the chapel/church is magnificent , slap bang in the middle of the campus and the acoustics to die for. so, this blog,which i presumed would continue after my degree is now continuing as my MA documentation. i’ve been happily inspired by iwan bala, great presentation on ideas/work/ideas and bingo…i applied his artdaily method and was immediately and serendipitously rewarded by a Finnish artist i saw in Helsinki…so, i began in my sketch/notebook and MA underway…questions, ruminations…continuing.
i managed to get the photographs i wanted of lissie in london for her portrait and was free to begin on the photos i took of sue just before i went to london.i think i’m going to satrt another portrait of suzie next week in carmarthen by using my ‘if not now, when?/os nid nawr, pryd?’ piece, which i did for the show in september and will start some small gouache/graphite/pen, mixed-media jobbies of lissie to start my long intentioned desire to see if i can work small and to use gouache and graphite again.
before i forget, i must add that saw the jerwood drawing prize…very disappointing, but made p for it by going to see malevich at tate britain…that was awesome and totally inspiring.more of that later…bed!!!

been a long while doing my Episode 1 of Klondike Annie one-woman show….done! and i have been drawing and painting and exhibiting…

more meri’s. i’ve started to morph meri into the creatures that she makes. strangely, the small blue painting includes a creature i wanted to feature and that particular piece sold after ten years, unbeknownst to me, literally to the day i painted it. also strangely, the piece went to vienna and i have lived in vienna….very serendipity…

drawing of meri wells, ceramicist, aberhosan, cymru, wales…charcoal, paper….4 x 5’…

 

 

having done this drawing, i will be going on to do more drawings and a painting if not more than one painting of meri. so much material to work from with meri wells herself as well as taking ideas from her ceramic work and her house! her home is spectacular. An old welsh farmhouse in aberhosan, near machynlleth, gwynedd. she has renovated the house over a period of about thirty years or more. Her studio and kiln are out in the garden. the house is full of her and other ceramicists’ work. I can’t begin to describe how remarkable it is to be there. Next, I’ll be going back to make sketches working in situ.. A very exciting prospect to get on with the next stage of this series. thank you meri wells. diolch yn fawr.