Surface and depth ……

I am starting a new blog over on Wordpress HERE - this is to document my MA practice but I will be continuing with this blog too! I intend to use this blog for other creative reflections and ramblings - the more everyday moments that I pay attention to - maybe this will overlap but at the moment it seems pertinent to keep them separate.

I feel that I've neglected my own blog as well as those that I follow but now winter is here (the clocks just changed here in the UK) I am hoping to have more time for indoor pursuits like reading, blogging, being in the studio, watching films, cooking etc. etc.

I've just planted lots of bulbs in the garden as an affirmation of underground slow growth during these winter months and expectations of next spring blooms!

I've been thinking a lot about PLACE and working with images recorded on a one day mark making workshop at the Newlyn School of Art - it was a experimental and fun day spent down in Newlyn Harbour collecting visual information and then back in the studio making work.

I took lots of photos but seem to keep returning to my fascination with these posts.......

I am interested in the faded light at the top of this image – it is something to do with memory and how that fades, leaving certain aspects highlighted…..

 

like that ladder!

then there were the abstract marks!

I also made some rubbings – and so it goes on – the struggle is in making sense of it all – but then maybe ‘the struggle is the point’!

It was a long way to go...........

but it was worth it!

Trevor Bell
Enigma 2011

Falmouth University are running a series of MA lectures and last night it was the painter Trevor Bell (his website can be found HERE) - he is now 82 years and still wondering what his next inspiration will be! He showed numerous slides of his work spanning 60 years including a drawing he did aged 4, which he explained, displayed marks that interested him today. I first saw his work at Leeds University where he was a Gregory Fellow in 2005 and then at Millennium, St Ives earlier this year He moved down to St Ives in the 1950's for a few years. After an extensive career both in the UK and the States he has returned to live in Cornwall.
There is such energy and movement in his paintings. His concern  with space and the structures of his canvases give them a sculptural quality.  He didn't stop talking for over an hour telling us amusing stories of the life and travels of his paintings which are spread throughout the world. I noted down a few his words,  he said "let paintings be a living thing, things (like light) can change things" and "colour has it's own voice". He finished off by saying "you must always work for your God, even if you don't have one".
I feel so inspired to begin painting now and and at the start of my MA course I have been given the task of 100 paintings in a week - I shall start in a few days and see where this immersion in painting takes me