Let's Talk Art Blog

Connections are everything....but where do we find them? I've had cause to think a lot about 'connections' in the past few weeks, and in a variety of different contexts. It's a phrase that's been bouncing around the studio as I work away on 3 big paintings, each in different colour palettes, with the knowledge that they'll hang side by side being a pressing concern in the making of the work. I somehow need to 'connect' them all and I can't rely on colour to help me do this

This sketch was prompted by a pile of collage paper scraps and some interesting shapes that I'd cut out from my printmaking dump sheets and then overprinted. I thought I’d see how far I could go with just collage pieces to get started this time, before the urge to add paint got the better of me. It was looking a bit garbled to begin with, but at the start I was really just thinking about covering up the white paper.

At this year's Noosa Open Studios I think the most commonly asked questions were about incorporating pencil and charcoal into mixed media work. So I thought I'd share a quick summary and a demonstration video about how I set these types of marks so that they stay put and don't keep smudging as the work progresses!

Why am I doing a U-turn? I think I may have an answer...... I began working on a new piece during Noosa Open Studios - really so that I could occupy my mind and my hands whist the studio was quiet. In many ways this is the best way for me to start new work - with plenty of distractions and interruptions - I can't get too focused and fussy in those early stages if I can't maintain my train of thought!

With so many interesting snippets of my recent organic print experiments crowding the bench, I couldn't resist taking a sidestep to make a new sketch that incorporated some of them.

I print with all kinds of interesting found objects, and I do have a few favourites, like egg cartons and cardboard packaging, that I like to use to create prints on my gel plate. But having started on a new painting I found I was looking for some prints with a more organic feel, rather than geometric patterns or structured designs. So I turned to our veggie patch, which is unashamedly sprouting lots of lovely weeds at the moment, including a kind of marsh grass which turned