Dancing girls

 



 

This is the first of many paintings that will appear in response to my trip to Israel. The background I created very spontaneously and quickly using leftover paint from some other work I was doing and had no real intentions for it at the time. However I was really happy with the result and I wanted to reflect the energy I felt painting in the main image, so I found two silhouettes of myself and my friend Alex dancing at a party in the forest. Might do a bit of tweaking to it - add some highlights to the figures to tie them in a bit more with the background, but overall I'm very pleased with it. It makes me happy looking at it, because I remember how happy we were dancing!

Landscapes of Israel

 

From Tel Aviv, to the dessert, to the wall diving Israel and Palestine, the country astounded me with it's bright colours, clear blue skies and contrasts between new and old, religious and secular, war and peace. So much inspiration to be found.

Art in Tel Aviv

 

 

Despite spending hours in Tel Aviv's incredible Museum of Modern Art, I actually found more inspiration on the streets of the city which are filled with graffiti, stencilling and guerrilla artwork. 

Mini-Makers session at MK gallery

 

 

This was my first mini-makers session at Milton Keynes gallery and it was a real success. We were working on the themes of painting techniques and Milton Keynes architecture. Instead of paint brushes, we used a range of household implements to make marks with including straws, balloons, sponges, plastic cutlery and Clingfilm! Everyone loved getting really messy and it was great to see them realise that paint could be used in such experimental ways. We then looked at and discussed different buildings and spaces in Milton Keynes, thinking about shapes in particular. Everyone then took scissors to their paintings, creating buildings, trees, sun, rain, cars and people out of them and composed them into beautiful unique cityscapes.

 

We also worked on one large collaborative piece (see top image) which went through the same process as the individual paintings. I've taken this masterpiece home to do some additional work to it and will post a photo on here once it's complete!

MK gallery workshop

 

 

This was my first workshop at MK gallery, working with yr1 pupils from a local school. The workshop was based on the current exhibition, Treasures in MK, which showed artworks from local collectors and collections based loosely on three themes; portrait, maritime and landscape. With these three in mind, I collected lots of different collage materials and the pupils made exciting colourful images of people, the seaside and the countryside. They loved playing with the different materials and, with no pens on the table to draw outlines, they really had to be imaginative and create using shapes and colours alone. It was fantastic to see them make artworks that they were so proud of and then look around the exhibition and be able to make links between their own work and the artworks on display in the gallery.

Lines in the sky

 

 

One of the many things I love about Manchester is it's constant evolution, every time I visit something has changed...new buildings, new shops... and this time the wheel had been moved from the bottom of Market Street to the top, which brought a whole new focus to Piccadilly Gardens and whole new photo opportunity for me. Something draws me to things against the backdrop of the sky...I think it's the contrast of mother nature with man-made creations. Paint against pen. Freedom against constriction. Something like that anyway.

Joana Vasconcelos exhibition

 

 

I was really excited about going to Manchester Art gallery having not been for so long and though I had not heard great things about it's current exhibition by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, I was very pleasantly surprised. My favourite element of the exhibition was not the three main large pieces which you had to pay to see, but the smaller pieces which were dotted around the other rooms of the gallery, in amongst the traditional paintings, subtly hiding amongst them. The contrast between old and new, dull and bright, was extremely refreshing and brave and brought Joana's work to the whole gallery, rather than just secluding it to one small section. Lovely work.