Watercolours

I went with Jane to see the new Watercolours exhibition at Tate Britain nearly two weeks ago. It covers a huge range of works, from ancient illustrated manuscripts with elaborate birds and foliage, botanical illustrations, through the expected landscapes in pale shades, but also some unexpected ones, like Charles Rennie Machintosh's 'Fetges', which had a clarity and rhythm to its huddle of grey houses that was alot livelier than my description!




Mackintosh 'Fetges' c1927




Melville 'The Blue Night, Venice' 1897

 

Then larger pre-raphaelites, which looked fussy and static (Arthur Melville's 'The Blue Night, Venice' being an atmospheric exception), aspects of war (Ute Wittwer's 'Ruin' - large black and white scene of bomb damage) to more modern and abstract work, including Andy Goldsworthy's trace of one of his melting snowballs, full of earth. His work always has that ring of truth to me; letting nature do the talking.

I was struck by Jenny Franklin's 'Sourced Earth: Regeneration'; puddles of yellow ochre and black looking like cactus shadows. As always for me it's that combination of chance and intention.





Jenny Franklin - from her website. Not the work on show, but similar

 I also stopped in front of  Rebecca Salter's grey and black panel which looked like watered silk, but was aparently made by dragging a  chopstick loaded with black colour across the grey ground.

Anish Kapoor's Untitled 1990, below, has that intensity of pigment that he so masters - nothing could be redder, or blacker. But I read that this is gouache, not watercolour. So does it really belong here?


Anish Kapoor Untitled 1990

And although it is more than 150 years old, Turner's 'The Blue Rigi, Sunrise' of 1842  has such power and atmosphere, I just had to stop and stare. There is something so modern in his hints of form and looseness of application and yet you feel that you could have been there, standing next to him, and it would have looked just like that. We were on a Swiss lake two summers ago. I wish I'd got up before sunrise to see this sight. Or then again, is it all his invention? I think I read that he worked mostly in the studio.



Turner ' The Blue Rigi, Sunrise'

Looking for photos to add to this blog on the Tate website and came across the video of John Squire doing a mix of printing and painting. Look here: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/watercolour/default.shtm. (Sorry uploading videos is beyond my blogging capabilities at the moment) I want to do stuff like that...

Time to get the paints out...but I always say that....

Knitting niggles

I've been knitting in front of the TV. Got very excited when I found some very colourful Japanese wool in John Lewis, so colourful I just had to have it!

But maybe a bit much all on its own, so I bought some quiet greys to accompany it. First of all I thought I would knit a kind of plaited gilet from a Rowan book. So I knitted all the strips, plaited them, crocheted the plaits together...then realised that it didn't work.

So started again with just the pale grey, and a more interesting cable pattern, which I decided could work as a cowl / collar. I felt it needed lining because the wool is just a bit hairy and I think it will probably irritate my neck, so back to John Lewis (what would I do without that shop?) for some jersey, and a couple of buttons. I'm pleased with the result.

But what to do with the original multi-coloured wool? I tried it with the knitting nancy, so now I'm left with some long tubes of Japanese multicoloured wool. What to do with them? Maybe another scarf/cowl??? How many does a girl need?

Joyeux anniversaire, Sandra

It's Sandra's birthday today, so I've made her a card.

It's the latest variant of the grid idea I started last year. Nets are kinds of flexibble grids, which appeal to me for allowing external forces to distort an ordered pattern. I started with some photos of netting,

messed around with them on http://www.picnik.com/, which is like Photoshop for dummies - and I'm a dummy when it comes to Photoshop. I get carried away with the applications, and the possibilities for creating exhuberantly bright colours.

From there it was a lino block, and print in ultramarine blue....

then more picnik manipulation, in duo tone...

.... and finally some cutting and colouring and Pritt stick. I left it overnight and the edges curled up, but I quite liked that!

Welcome to my blog

A late resolution becomes reality. Here is my first entry on my blog. With thanks to Margaret, Laura and Anne for setting such inspirational examples, and Helen for her encouragement, I'm now jumping in to this virtual world.

Yesterday Helen and I went to see the Watercolours and Works on Paper fair at the Science Museum. Luckily it wasn't all washed out dainty landscapes. Particular favourites were:

• Matt Forster for his pared-down landscapes of flat washes overlapping each other

• Rosa Sepple for translucent rich colours

• Emma Levine for papercuts of trees, some with pink on the reverse that glowed

 



•  Mila Furstova for black and white etchings of buildings which had been cut and then interwoven. Also excited to find from her website that she creates 3D forms from her paper cutouts. 

• Alexander Arundell for works relating to colour theory - and etched pom-pom and fuzzy spots

Also lots of rich pastel used in mixed media works. Backgrounds of stitched pieces of paper, or uneven with gesso primer... I've got my head full of ideas. Now I need to work some of them out on paper.