This piece will soon be on show in The Allotment, a lovely small restaurant owned and run by an artist friend who has just bought it. Thank you Victoria!
Meanwhile, I’ve been working on some lino reduction prints, though I am “unable” to make any of them the same. I am not sure if I need to add anything or whether they work just as they are …. that old chestnut to quote another artist friend.
Well, stuck at home mainly, avoiding infection with treatment delayed for a bit due to low white blood cell count, I have carried on working with traces: marks made while working on another piece. So one piece literally generates the start of another piece and the starting marks are to some extent random or at least spontaneous.
Then depending on all the other stuff I seem to have on the go I work into the piece thus started and the results can be surprising. Like this one, which came about as I found an old batik tjanting from my teenage days doing batik with my mother. They were some of my happiest times. I filled it (not too full) with ink which flowed continuously resulting in a very fluid line.
I worry it might be a bit decorative but then it is what came out and having a continuous line of flowing ink greatly influenced the final marks I made. And does this decorative turn matter? And why am I worrying?
Sometimes the unexpected happens. I took a friend to see some work in a small exhibition of drawings by participants in the CHALKUP21 drawing show, which includes work by me and I ended up selling her one. This brings this year’s sales to 7, which is unprecedented. Add in the fact that I have a paid commission and I am doing quite well all in all, on this measure.
Just depressing on the health front but I’ve had a good week and started some new work in the studio. I also dug these three circular prints out of my plan chest – these were an experiment in “observational prints” – in other words done on the spot. It was a really hot day in April and the slow-drying acrylics dried up pretty immediately but I got some of it onto the paper.
Clare Smith's mixed English/Chinese heritage informs her perspective on issues of identity and categorisation. Her nomadic childhood and early adulthood have meant a somewhat ambivalent relationship to place, reinforced by the sense of ambiguity that comes from her mixed identity. Smith works with drawing, print media, collage and moving image to investigate this ambivalence, with references to craft, the importance of labour and the handmade. Through her choice of materials and approaches, she creates work which attempts to create a sense of unity, an interpretation of Homi Bhabha's "Third Space" - seen as a space in which different parts can come together to challenge dominant ideas of wholeness. Collaboration is part of Smith’s practice and she is also co-founder of Dover Arts Development (DAD) together with painter, Joanna Jones. This involves working with many different artists, curation, organisation, event management, creating networks across East Kent and influencing the public realm in Dover. Clare works from a studio in Dover. She has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
