Colours of Pembrokeshire

Azure seas

Yarns for weaving at Melin Tregwynt

Have inspired some artistic activities with paint and thread.

Busy table - no paintbrush, so I had to improvise with found feathers and sheep’s wool.

“Thread painting” “ khadi paper, watercolour paint, variegated thread

Finding joy in colour - need to find it somewhere

May day colours

Blossom

Cowslips

Preparing collage papers - colours a little more sombre

Art: perspective in two forms

The day started with a visit to the Annely Juda Gallery to see the new David Hockney exhibition of photography and paintings.  I wasn't overly convinced by the paintings, like several reviewers, but the photography collages / combinations/ photographic drawings are really different and seemed to me, to be worth travelling to see.  The odd perspective changes encourage many looks at the same scene, and there is a game of " find the object" in identifying repeated instances of people and objects across the series of paintings and photographs.

Then on to the drawing course, where we were using enlargements and reductions of our drawings to cut out shapes from painted paper and then collage these in different formations.  Good fn, but I found it very difficult to settle on one arrangement.  Photography not helped by the strong shadows in the studio this afternoon.

I can see some of these being used in textile pieces in the future.

Tone and value - on paper and cloth

I started a new job last week, hence the gap in blogging.  All well, but everyone in the household is adjusting to a revised routine.  

The Morley class this week was about tone, and capturing a likeness of an individual using only tone.  I really understood this, mostly as the tutor was very helpful and started us off with very pixellated black and white photograph, so no 3 dimensional issues to contend with.

( The sketch in the upper right corner was me trying to capture the design lines on a dress that one of my classmates was wearing).  

As this was charcoal, I tried to protect it on the way home and got another faint, inverted impression of the same photograph.

This was a useful lesson as it also showed me where I had not included enough contrast of tone in a couple of blocks made for the round robin challenge this month.

Not enough  contrast of tone

Better

Best

City adventures - sculpture, fashion, froth, textiles, wildlife large and small

The past few days have been full of art and more wildlife encounters.  First of all a walk around Sydney finding urban sculpture. 

"Youngster: by Caroline Rothwell on George Street.

Forgotten Songs by Michael Thomas Hill, which is a sculptural and aural installation that changes between night and day.

I loved the shapes of the bottom of the cages against the grid of the building.

Next to the Powerhouse Museum, to see the costumes from the film of Strictly Ballroom, and to whet my appetite for the musical that we are going to see in 10 days.  These costumes were even more over the top than I had expected.

At the same museum, there were examples of some of the work of the final year fashion students from Sydney colleges.  Instead of sketchbooks, they had inspiration boxes in front of their creations, which was a good way to demonstrate the breadth of their influences.  First Emma Macgregor's gorgeous, ethereal dresses

Then the wonderful sculptural creations of Yousef Akbar

Finally, on the way to an early dinner at Movida, ( smoked tomato sorbet, anyone?) an unexpected encounter with two young dancers in Kimber Lane, where there is another of the public art installations.

The next day started early with a train to Newcastle to visit a long-term friend.  When
I am in a culture wher eno English is spoken , I am less struck by the oddities of that culture than when I am in other English-speaking country.  One of these oddities was the train notceboard, showing that an empty train would be passing - blurry as I didn't have my camera set up correctly.

This was my first morning of rain during my visit, and the journey through the Hawkesbury river area was full of misty valleys and dark reflections on the water.

I did do some stitching on the 2h journey - as i was going up to see some textiles, I felt the need to to do.

The key visual experience of the trip was to visit an exhibition at Timeless Textiles, an intriguing textile gallery.  This was a beautiful space, and the key exhibition was of pieces by Omila Bir,  ( who doesn't seem to have a website) shibori fabrics, dyed using natural dyes.

I was particularly intrigued by the pieces with very regular squares and rectangles of resist.

A beautiful large piece had wonderful patterns

The owner of the gallery is a felter, and attracts teachers who are internationally famous, such as Kerr Grabowski, known for her work with deconstructed screen printing.  One of Kerr's scarves was for sale in the shop.

New to me was the name of Meredith Woolnough, whose machine stitched pictures / sculptures / installations were breathtaking.

Next to the Art Gallery of Newcastle, whose policy on photography is directly in opposition to that of all other galleries I have visited on this trip, in that no photography is allowed.  As this is a public collection, that seems very inconsistent to me.  Lots of native Australian artists, and some wonderful cut paper by Kylie Stillman.
 

Lastly, a walk along Bar Beach, to see where my sister did a triathlon, and thrill of thrills, two whales playing in the bay about 500m offshore.  Fins, backs and spouts, but no tails, still an incredible thing for a Brit to see.

Lots more to come, but I'm now probably out of blogging opportunities for 10 days, as we are off to here, and then to here.

PS the small wildlife encounter, was at a yoga class at a city gym, when in the middle of the warrior poses, and the supposedly calm breathing, a huge cockroach made its way down the length of the gym.  The instructor took a very non-yogic action to get rid of it.