Tag Archive for: finding new art

This is the week that spring has sprung! Walking on Monday morning the sunshine was welcome on my face and it made realise just how long it had been since I had felt that warm glow – and how GOOD it felt!

Funny, how sometimes we don’t know what we are missing until we get reminded about it.

Kandinsky quote colour influence soul

I headed off on Monday (an extra leap year day!) to see an exhibition at the Mall Galleries. The exhibitions there are admittedly not the most cutting edge, but they are usually open submission shows from various art societies with different judges on the selection panel so they offer a broad range of current work, on a sensible scale that you may actually want in your home.

Yellow tape marks and gridThe current exhibition was for The Pastel Society. I may have been a bit abrupt and dismissed pastels as grannyish. Pastel vases flowers? No thanks! But recently I have found that I’ve been using them more in drawings and sketchbooks  in combination with other materials (more next week…) so I wanted so see what was going on in pastel land. I spotted maybe three artists whose work I particularly enjoyed, but three is enough to prompt some new ideas and wake me up to the possibilities. My mistake about pastels. Love making mistakes like this!

 

 

IMG_7031As I walked afterwards through London in the sunshine (always a treat!) I was just wandering towards an art supply shop and taking a few photos of things that caught my eye; these taped yellow markings on the windows of a construction site – warnings? Stars, in a row, but all different….

 

 

 

 

IMG_7047Later in the week I joined an Instagram challenge following a word prompt each day and on Thursday it was “yellow” . Noticing; that’s what it’s all about; once I knew I was on the look out for yellow I saw it everywhere… my image for that day was the soft yellow against the white stripe of brickwork. Sun over a built horizon? Random additions to a man made structure…

I even recognised that yellow had been with me all week, in the images I had captured previously. Making these visual links, and seeing how they surface, often a while later, is one of the great joys of making art.

Looking at art makes you see things in a new way. So here is my yellow story of the week: sunshine, abstract shapes, small flashes of colour in my urban environment, and highlights of yellow and blue in the current early stages of work on the easel. Watch out for the sunshine – it makes you feel great!!

On the easel Alice Sheridan

To keep up with regular images you can catch me on Instagram here.

If you like the look of this work in progress, make sure you are first to know when finished work goes on sale by joining for studio updates below:

The last time I showed at Artists at Home my work was mainly landscape paintings. I had started to incorporate printed line and collage and was keen to try printmaking techniques to explore the mix between a controlled and gestural mark in a medium which can be very technical.

I’ve had a great couple of years! There is so much to discover and each new process demands to be investigated. There is a mix on show this year; carborundum, collograph and intaglio processes of etched metal and drypoint. I have been a bit like a child in a sweet shop: a glut of choices and sometimes I haven’t known which to choose next

Looking around the work I have on show many may think this doesn’t look much like landscape. But all these pieces are my landscape. I live in an urban environment and looking at my surroundings and judging them with new eyes is what I need to do to challenge myself. Even a journey on the Underground can spark new work . If you can spot it from my sketchbook bonus point for you. (I’ll come back and show you the sequence sometime…) Where we find ourselves and what our selective mind chooses to see is a way we have to control how we interpret our situation. Working it out is where the fun is.

Counter intuitively I don’t want to use printmaking to reproduce a replica image so I try to find ways to make an image unique. Not the most efficient solution always, but this has hopefully resulted in an interesting mix of work.

If you are in West London, come and visit. I’m at Studio 24 in Chiswick full details at Artists at Home

Now it’s all framed and hung I’m excited to start welcoming visitors… let tomorrow begin!

Etching with chine collée; each plate is a unique variation

Etching with chine collée; each plate is a unique variation

Biography
I studied Foundation Course at Kingston in 1992 followed by a BA in Graphic Design at Nottingham Trent University where my work was selected for exhibition at the Business Design Centre.

Working as designer for London agencies didn’t seem so important once I had children, but the times I have stopped creating visual work have caused me problems! It is an essential part of what I am. Finding a way to fit this in and develop is essential – I know what I’d like to create next, but we’ll have to wait and see…