There are white blobs of paint on all these trees so that  with a change in the viewer's position, alternative lines and combinations of marks are revealed to create a new view.

  Visitor's feedback at Barbara Hepworth's studio in St Ives.

Jerwood Drawing Prize

13 Feb 2014 - 09 Mar 2014

Image: Emma Vidal, Anthropology I, 2013 (Charcoal on paper)

Been to see this today.   TWO GALLERIES FULL OF DRAWING!!!!!  

Plymouth Arts Centre 13 February –  9 March

Plymouth College of Art 10 February - 8 March 

'I phone' but I can also sketch.  Have waited soooooo long to be

able to do this out and about with my finger on a screen.  

Vague memories of Kate Smith and her notion of this 

screen contact; a direct, instinctive, mark rather than a 

divorce from a sensual experience of drawing

(a common perception of all things digital).

I have just realised the importance of documentation.   How many moments have I forgotten.  How much 'past' is out there in the ether, lost.
I always berate myself for not recording my work.  Not having enough evidence.  But in my family life I am too much in the moment to really want to record it.  I found this and some other little sequences in the dusty corner of my laptop and I have to say - I have regretted not recording more.
The paradox - miss the moment behind a lens or miss the moment forever......    

    (I can't get the video to upload on this post.   It illustrates my point perfectly, however, I am too full of red wine recently procured from a wonderful adventure with my little beasts in France to deal with technology.  I wish I could control this medium in the same way as a pencil. x

Long time no see!

I found this on a wall near our first house here in Devon.  The wall has gone now.  I'm glad I had the photo.  I keep trying to remember everything all the time, desperately document my thoughts and memories, clinging to ideas lest they evaporate.  It's very stressful!  Current learning curve - let it go.  If it's important it will come back.

I'm not creating a great deal at the moment. Professionally I'm off grid! Blogging has fallen by the wayside somewhat.  I have been working in a school with a boy who needs one to one support.  I'm so lucky because we are free to plan our timetable according to how he is dealing with his emotions.  This means we are not too restricted and we spend a lot of time using art to work on the things he needs to deal with.  Doubly lucky that he enjoys drawing as much as I do.  We're doing ok.

The other bit of lucky business going on is my role as mentor to another artist, Sarah Scaife.  This opportunity has been bliss.  We are very alike and understand each other.  Her way of working is incredibly original and I love it.  Although she considers me to be giving to her, I am getting so much out of it too.  Rather than getting sucked into the primary education system and wrinkling up like an old pot of cheap poster paint I am still keeping one large foot in the critical art world.  My faith remains in tact.

So things change.  Life moves on.  But I still feel at home, which is an important topic at the moment as Sarah's project is called Home Truths.  I'll elaborate as soon as possible................

October!  The month of drawing! I'm really honoured to be 'drawing big' this year at High Cross House.
It's going to be great.  Lines, marks and modernist space..... yum yum. Tell yer mates! It's free to TQ9-ers.....

I'm also bubbling over with excitement to be enrolling on a print course at the Dartington Print Workshop with Louise Scammell.  This has been an ambition for a long time to get to grips with some print techniques and take things in a slightly different direction.  I love learning new things and I feel at the moment I need to absorb and discover quietly rather than expressing out.  Keep seeing Squirrels so maybe there's some squirrel medicine at play somewhere....storing for the Winter and all that.

Last week found me giving a little help to an amazing woman called Katheryn Trenshaw and her mammoth project IN YOUR OWN SKIN  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1456356865/in-your-own-skin-project Check it out - and the Kickstarter site which has blown me away........
So here's to Autumn, enjoy!

Goodbye High Cross House

This week I cleared out the studio at High Cross.  It's been over six months and spanned three seasons since I moved in.  I saw a whole field get ploughed, planted and harvested with massive corn plants over my trips to and fro.
These two images are some of the last that came out.  They really have the essence of my experience of the residency.  I'm going to miss it tremendously.  Not least because the project I was going to has fallen through so I am without a space to work again.  But in a deep way the house has moved, inspired and motivated me.  The whole of the legacy of the Dartington Estate has affected me to realise my own potential and also to remember the power of progressive thought.
A collection of like minded, expansive thinkers has the energy to create such an amazing environment and the ripples are continuous.
I could have used the space more inventively, I thought in retrospect - some of the more experimental sculptural ideas didn't come off - but to be honest I am happy with the journey I took. The time there encouraged me to actually go inside myself and find the natural voice and let it to resonate quietly between the walls and out of the window around the amazing trees and sky and fields.
So now the challenge is to keep the momentum of this work and create some new opportunities.  I'm looking for a studio, embarking on a printmaking workshop to learn some new things (so excited!) and cooking up some little ideas for happenings to explore.  When one door closes another couple open.....

Ashes

Following a harrowing few weeks of emotional turmoil I have tentatively been putting myself back together again.  The Blog has been neglected so I thought I would begin to talk again, slowly.  It seemed my work had flatlined slightly, or my feelings about it had.  There have been immensely deep changes in my soul and it simultaneously dislodged debris from my over-academic-over-analysing-aspiring-ego.
Take time, I told myself.  Let the work flow.  Look at the work already made.  See it with fresh eyes.  So I stopped, looked and saw that my emotions are ever present in the work.  That it speaks of that space in all of us where tranquility and serenity hides.  The best thing is that the work itself shows me where to go. I don't have to THINK...... I am just feeling now.

Off the page...

Am planning an experimental collaboration with voice artist Shelley Hodgson listeningtovoices.blogpsot.co.uk
It will take place on Wednesday 11th July from 10am on Shelley's radio show on  http://soundartradio.org.uk.
More info to follow.

for some reason the link to Shelley's blog won't work but I'll get it up asap because she is well worth getting to know, I promise you!!!!

Recently began thinking about landscapes, internal and external.  I've been drawing some fairly ordinary observational sketches.  It's cool to get back to meditating on something, letting it speak for itself.  I have been holding on too tightly to ideas and theories lately but in letting them go I think they are coming back more comfortably.
Lots of pressure is not a good thing.  Sometimes it forces me to focus but at the moment it is pushing me under.  Having an open studio raises a few pressures and hurdles that I have managed to avoid in the past.  Like when to sell and what to sell and how to feel if it's not selling......  I haven't made work to sell for a long time and suddenly it has become an issue - surely I should be making a direct living out of what I do.  Two minutes into this mindset and I unravel.  When someone approaches me to buy something I kind of talk them out of it.  I can't work out why.  Inferior frames, lack of self worth, attachment to my work which is somehow part of myself.  Artists are notoriously bad business people but I am astonishingly rubbish!!!!  So I am going to work on this over the next few weeks, any tips gratefully received.....