Blog

As an illustration student and then a printmaker, I’ve almost always been surrounded by good draughts-people, and some that are frankly amazing at drawing. It can be intimidating. The received wisdom during my student years (and beyond) was that drawing was the foundation of all that was good in the art world and that it […]

…to skate away on. So says the Joni Mitchell song, ‘River’. As a native Canadian Joni obviously thinks of rivers as frozen entities (and I love the idea of skating full pelt through a snowy wilderness, when I want to escape the world- my skating skills pushed aside for the moment!). But I want to

…teach. That’s the saying anyway, but I’ve never believed this. For a start comparing creating and teaching is like comparing apples and oranges- they are completely different mindsets and disciplines. Sometimes you find an artist who’s a good teacher, sometimes a good teacher who’s creative in what they do. Very rarely, you come across someone

I’m a big advocate for DIY, low-tech and home printmaking, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  I’m enjoying mixing home and studio practice- not least because of all the lovely people I get to meet at my local open print studio. Most of my printmaking practice, since graduating in 2001, involved mono-printing

Poetry has always been part of my life- I vividly remember holding my breath when I read or heard certain poems, they often move me more than visual art. But this year I want to intentionally make it a regular part of my life. For me it’s one of the most emotive arts.  I’m also

Having just finished Olivia Laing’s excellent ‘A Garden Against Time’ (last month’s recommended book) and in the next breath, so to speak, visited the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery, my mind is full of gardens and Edens and paradise, but also what gardens might mean to artists and gardens AS art. ‘A Garden

Resolutions, intentions, dreams, plans, goals, habits. We aim for change each New Year, set ourselves straight again, brush off the dust from last year. This year it will be better. I will be better. I’m not so sure about that. To want to be better implies that you’re starting from a point of not being

I recently visited the Paula Rego and Goya exhibition at the Holbourne Museum in Bath. It was nightmarish. Not just scary, but surreal, both artist producing dream-like, sinister images that felt like they had reached into the furthest corners of the subconcious mind to wrench out images. They were also intensely light and dark, working

What do you do when your inspiration is zero? After a bottleneck of art events recently and my usual overestimation of my capacity, I found myself burnt out and blue. I knew I needed to do something creative, but the motivation had left me. I was worn out with nothing to give. I needed to

And if it does, what makes it beautiful anyway? I did an Illustration degree 20 years ago and that time one of the worst ways you could describe art was ‘illustrative’. The same goes for the idea of merely creating ‘pretty pictures’. But can we use beauty to our own ends and what’s so wrong