In just 2 weeks time we will be setting up our PaperFields exhibition at R K Burt in Union Street, London!
While busy making we are also emailing, phoning and tweeting about the upcoming exhibition, plus completing the work and getting it ready to hang. We’ve all exhibited before, but London being fairly far away makes it more important to be able to look at the exhibition coming together as a whole, whilst also considering the finer details of the work, supporting each other in what we are each striving for individually in our practices and generally communicating with each other regularly. The best way is face-to-face and in this period when most of us have just graduated, the meeting is incredibly valuable. Each time we meet I come away feeling a further understanding of the whole process and my motivation takes a leap.
My approach to building work for this exhibition is to continue my practice just adding the stipulation ( turns out it’s creativity enhancing – who knew?) of using paper.
I have been using the Intaglio printing press using gorgeous Fabriano paper at The Print Shed in Madley, most recently etching script onto thin plastic sheet. I was introduced to this technique by Sam Staff and Rosie Daffern in the run up to a group exhibition in Hereford called Art of the Hidden Oak, when we spent a day printing cards for the exhibition. I’m then working on top of that – it’s slowly evolving that one – I have put liquid acrylic onto it and let it run around the paper, it feels a bit like etch-a-sketch. I’m fascinted by the partial loss of control compared to the controlled manner of writing.
There are many pieces on the go at once just now – smaller pieces – oil on paper with torn writing floating in the limited palette of crimson, ultramarine, raw umber and white. The aim was to limit my palette to Maroon and black and white…. I’ve recently been obsessing over Mondrian’s work and thinking if I could only have one colour – what would it be? Maroon, closely followed by a deep mossy green. I’ve also been trying to find a way to get to the Mondrian exhibition before it closes this Sunday, but I need to save up for staying in London, the travel and other necessary expenses, so unfortunately I’ll have to miss out. Instead, I am watching all the videos and reading as much as I can about his work, but this doesn’t come close to being there. I am particularly interested in how his studio was an extension of his work.
Today my focus is on one of the window displays (Daisy Rickards is filling the other ) in which I’ll be putting paper tubes so that passers by can still see into the gallery, but through an arrangement of tubes, with one side of each tube covered in my painting and writing clash. I’m working on sheets of card individually which will then be cut to size and stapled to form tubes. The windows at R K Burt are huge, bigger than I recalled from my initial visit in March and so I am needing to make a large quantity of work to fill it..to the point I am currently running out of drying space for all of it!
