recordings

... used to happen here much more frequently.

they have moved since. but, frankly, it's a bit of a mess. i am trying constantly to figure out how and what and also for whom i am recording.

i am thinking back to the many discussions i. and i used to have about diary writing, about keeping records. for ourselves or for others. i am also thinking about diaries burnt on a frequent basis so as not to leave a record.

part of my current recording mess is to do with teaching instructions: to keep a logbook of your learning. hah - something i turn to also when i am teaching. reflective journals abound to provide a space to externalise, reflect and thus absorb more easily what is to be learned.

do i record textually, visually, aurally? organised by subject; by approach; by who it is for?

all these questions stop me from recording. i need to figure out the entirety before i can get started. and the entirety needs to provide plenty of openings for unforeseen developments. oh dear... thinking and living in wholeism can be a bit daunting.

so, i'm devising ever more journals in my electronic journalling software notetaker (very good, exc. that it is not half as integrative as it claims to be, and exporting to pdf is a bit of a pain); have written notebooks (divided in three; currently: General/Research - Art - Skills work); and plenty of sketchbooks, divided into portability, assignment work, and general.

my plan is to work on 2-3 art projects at any one time; my plan is also to organise these a bit like course modules. there are three in development: (1) soundworks/ (2) landscapism art, naturally/(3) body identity makings. the middle one is the most clearly formed (somewhat easily so: it's a more decisive interrogation of my fieldwork paintings/drawings/prints to take in also an urban element (beginning with matta clark) and some details of nature). the media for these will largely be drawing and printmaking (etching) for the next year.

[the 2-3 limitation is a bit of a cop out, easily unmasked: there are as much as 20-30 strands on the go at any one time, and i maintain that i can maintain these with ease... ever optimistic]

today, (2) landscapism in art, naturally, acquired its first page in the new a3 sketchbook that will be the overall holding file for it. phew. that only took me six weeks, largely due to my recording hang ups, see above.

page 1, monotype, 20x25cm

happy recording - wherever and however.

people do things

i am still thinking in blog, a lot of the times. so, there have been many beginnings or even full blog posts for the past couple of months. yet: many of them didn't appear here. i kind of used them as thinking tools for myself or discussed them in person with others offline.

so, it's been rather quiet. let me see, if that can change again.

one of the more persistent thoughts over the last week or so is one of amazement and surprise. it's a little game i've been playing with myself and which now is fairly explicit: what are the things that i do not need?

i don't like the virtue of frugality that this seemingly establishes. and i don't think that's what it's about. instead, i like it to be about the boundaries of what is normal and taken for granted.

looking back, i know fine well that among the best things that happened were two significant moves, one when i was thirteen and then when i first arrived in glasgow in the mid-1990s.  both of them were difficult, often lonely and in many ways fraught as they threw myself back onto myself and myself only.

and alongside, they became about the social ways in which normality is constructed:

'this is how things are to be done'
became a
'this is how some people like to do things in this place and in this time'.

office for sale

so, my thinking of the things i do not need is whispering to me: you leaving academia is going to be alongside those two moves one of the best things you've ever done. it's a quiet whisper currently, but it's been getting louder as i'm busy cancelling taken for granted unpaid administrative chores, begin to ignore esteem indicators and the 'must-do' calls... all taken for granted, for normal, as the things one cannot do without.

... in this particular place and time.

leaving that particular place, time and institutional context is making that explicit. and even if it is going to be only for a short time, i'm excited by my tax return, the mindmap of future work for the year and the fact that i now worked out a day rate for my work.

boundaries? made by people, mostly. need a good go at stretching, extending and if sensible, ignoring.

So, he took the time with him

... but before that, he told me, some fifteen years ago that I would go and publish books. I just laughed: 'dream on!' But he should be right. He never published a book of his own. I think he should have one, and so he now has one - as My ghost of time.

Two weeks ago, when I was clearing my office I came across a lot of his writings though. Pieces about the Yugoslav war, the politics of education, the need to organise. Along with some grainy photos of him, H., and several others staging the occupation of university buildings in 1993.

I realised that I am now the age he was when I left him to go to Glasgow. The 13 years that happened since are such a long time. It's so much that happened inbetween to make me the person I am now. So, he lost me to Glasgow and I would lose him to the sea - a week before I had to defend my PhD in 2003.

That's all a long time ago. And I learned a lot:

• to look and observe carefully
• the importance of ordinariness
• that one can know things without having to discuss these; but one must never stop
  
• asking questions; and
• the believe in all of the above and thus in people

Now, I've been trying to figure what he may have learned from me. Well, I think I, in my youthful optimism, frustrated him often and with no end. If I can't help myself, I turn to superficiality, and I turned to it very often in those days. But I think he may have learned that optimism can apply to oneself and one's past, too.

That's my ghost of time.

Now: this little piece of performance art was a fascinating experience. And a completely unanticipated one. I let Blogger autopost something that was written one evening (31 July 2009) while sitting in the White Room in Berlin and despairing over the loss of time. So, it was me and it wasn't.

As it was unfolding, I was getting the sense of separation/mediation/transformation of something that was done and that happened a while (and a long time) ago. All the time, it was happening 'live' to all of you.

Intriguing...

There's also much more alongside this, which became a bit clearer to me:

Much of what I make art of is concerned with loss and memory - the Fields and the Sea. And all the same, they become something else in the process; they aren't melancholy pieces, by any means; while only I. had read My ghost of time at the time I - eh, Merle - wrote it - and I for some time wasn't sure if it would see the light of day by any means, watching it unfold from behind my laptop felt very good and necessary.

And then there's something about people that matter: it's a bit vague at this stage, but has to do with 'doing the things that are important with the people that are important' - it's really basic, isn't it? To have the best kind of relationship with the people that matter; and it's only of partial importance whether they are alive or dead.

Back to the performance art: while Blogger was doing its thing, I begun to soak up contemporary art, in the space that is now open and in front of me. I got to think back at the Note to future self; asking what kind of art may I make in future. Oh: and that is sooo open, I love it. I don't have a clue what I may make. How fabulous is that!

Do you want to read/see My ghost of time in its entirety: on the sidebar is now a link to a full preview of the book on Blurb.

... and with all this, I've clawed some time back.

Time I never own; time which may be short.

But that is never a good enough reason not to.

I'm very sure of that.

Taking precedence...

... I was going to entertain you with a bit more on type dynamics, but then this was far more urgent and - frankly - far more entertaining, too... at least for me, perhaps for you?

Another visit to the sea. This may well be the last I sea of the West of Scotland coast for some time, but this morning, after having been far too tired for anything yesterday I decided to go to Troon again. Less than an hour on the train and a long sandy beach.

It was warm(ish) sunny, overcast to sunny and breezy. Well: on the beach it was VERY windy. But great: the sun was out, the tide was out too and so I had a fantastic walk, took lots of photos and thoroughly enjoyed my new music additions.

You wanna watch?

Switch the music on and here's Troon South Beach on a  sunny October Sunday.

 

 

And you know what? Change is here.

My job finishes in a week's time, next year at this time I will hopefully be a Fine Arts student in Berlin. And in the meantime I'll do assorted this and that, here and there - so, the blog will change a bit: I'll be putting more politics and research stuff into this too. No need to separate out all these parts any longer.

It makes breathing so much easier. It also is making my head so much lighter.

Happiness? This, here and now. Grin... Can you see it?

How to paint (with) ghosts

Elqui 2, Detail, oil on canvas, 50x50cm

Ok,... two gears down and turning to the left. I know (albeit not explicitly) what I'm after with my exploration of spectres. A quick verbal sketch (aka a list) turns up the following

• the ways, means and politics of hiding: domestic violence, migrant workers, politics of war
• past experiences, memories and ghosts (my own)
• other people's ghosts (e.g. Don A.'s, but there are plenty more)

... they all need care, caution and time; so I'll be doing plenty of: two steps forward, one back or three. What is however, much easier is painting technique and also, how others have dealt with spectres in art.

There has been plenty of this so far in here... and while I'm a bit rubbish at providing comprehensive summaries, how to guides and similar, I think I should spend some time on digging up those earlier posts on this.

Right now, I am thinking of

• Cy Twombly is painting loss (i-iii)
• Accidental loss
• The Bull's Hollow along with its various exploration of pond, depth, reflections and the vagaries of when the wind blows
• There is much in my working through the fields of where I grew up which is ghostly, at points ghastly.

More recently, the Elqui series of oil paintings is exploring the effects of adding layers of turpsy murky greys to add depth, distance and a general blur. Similarly, much of my printmaking has turned rather experimental and tried to hide, undo, whiten out earlier layers.

I will start with more detail on these two work processes, while I'm trying to reorder my tags and unhide some of the various strands of my new project of a new world unorder.

Elqui 3, Detail, oil on canvas, 50x50cm

Now... what to do???

Ok, ok... I kind of outmanouvred myself with the two previous ones. It's not that I don't know where I want to go with them... but at the same time they are at the moment not much more than markers for the future. So, the blog is acting - again - as a notekeeper.

The blog as notekeeper is a rather comfortable format, I think. It's a bit more sophisticated than my talking into my recording machine (well, the latter still needs some work on how to retrieve info I record) but it's the textual with a bit of visual format nicked from elsewhere on the net that works well and easily for me.

So, the disfigured faces of abused women and the kids that get sucked into the pavement that is the UK care system are there. They are also there along with some private notes of all that won't be possible and needs to be avoided. -

Putting them in here is easier than using the sketchbook. - Recording textually comes with my job and moving into some more visual seems to take a lot of time. Though - and here's today's theme (well, the obvious one at least) - I am becoming more and more excited about my recent sketchbook acquisitions.

Why?

Because they are larger and larger still. They are at least A4 - which when opened (it's a hardback rather than spiralbound) gives an A3 to work with which was exciting for the Chile sketches. But the one at home - the IDEAS book - is an A3 and when opened A2. It's fabulous, rather heavy cartridge paper which is happy with pastels, oils and printing inks so far. Being able to develop and spread out across a generous 58x42 cm is such a revelation (I know, some of you have been saying this for a long time, but now I've tried for myself, and guess what: you were right ;))

Here's a taster... But the proper stuff is coming soon when I move onto the disappearing spectres with my exploration. Before that, though, there will be one more post on seeing and classifying, and on the mysteries of some anonymous junk that ends in my inbox.

Tomorrow, or the day after (depending on how my exhibition preps are going.)

Elqui Palette in A3 sketchbook, Soft pastel and oil


Fieldlines in A3 Sketchbook, Lino prints

Notes to future self

Ryuichi Hirokawa, Al Ram checkpoint, West Bank, 2002
Guardian, g2, p. 25, 30/4/2009

... really for in five years, but maybe also already in two?

I gave a research seminar on Wednesday and was talking about youth policing, workfare and the making of criminalised selves. Much of what I was initially interested in with my academic work revolved around questions of social control, discipline and importantly the practices, policies and experiences that make a responsible and disciplined citizen. Much of these original questions had gotten a bit submerged in the interim with a much stronger focus on policy and governance but after the seminar I ended up talking to two colleagues who have, though in different fields, maintained a keen interest on such disciplines of the self.

...

Longwinded, half-baked... it links up with some of the abstractions I am intrigued by, again and again, and which require a much fuller set of art skills, techniques, and experiences that I currently have. - Questions over person-making, the stuff that happens inbetween, outside, elsewhere or in the middle. Well: the stuff that matters.

When I was talking to my two colleagues about what art I do and would love to do, I for the first time made those links between academia, knowledge production and painting quite explicit. Well: I do tell people at university that I love the kinds of questions and problems a piece of art poses in its production, and how it is necessary to let it provide its own answers - that no will of my own can make that canvas into something finished.

And I do enjoy the way in which this undoes what so much academics perceive the individual ingenuity of the lonely, fabulous, young academic who raises, on the basis of his own achievements to intellectual and professional heights. - well: remember the snake fights?

But, the discussions with M. and E. took me back to Foucault's Discipline and Punish; they also provided links to some more recent work on the making of entrepreneurial selves in thoroughly flexibilised and casualised labour markets.

On the way home, I saw this in the paper, took it with me, scanned it and it's here now as a reminder. That look, locking the police officer in its stare, defiantly. Now: I love that kind of photography, holding, maintaining a moment which radiates outwards, captures stuff (incidentally or purposefully) beyond its immediate reach. For whatever I'll do in two or five years? We'll see. I doubt that it will be photography, and I doubt it will be figurative, but: who knows?

And onwards.

So many words for what was, and a short list for what I'd like to do over the next year.

1. Two proposals for exhibitions:
- a group exhibition with the Eldon Group for in a couple of years time
- a small exhibition of the books from my Found Papers Project

2. More art stuff offline
- get a better sense of Glasgow's art scene
- check out Berlin too

3. More larger scale drawing pieces
- life drawing
- more observation pieces to fill some of the gaps of my distant love for the sea

4. Travel and paint
- in Scotland
- in Chile
- in Germany
Most of these will involve coastal locations, so for subject matter, seascapes will hopefully figure more prominently.

As for the last point, Casey introduced me to Astrid Volquardsen's pastel paintings of the German coast and her blog Pastell Bilder. Often small scale pieces they capture beautifully the sea, the breeze and the horizon.

The German coast is a place I haven't been to for years, and for the past few years fantasised rather intensely of going there for a holiday, preferably in autumn. So, when I stumbled across Astrid's evocative paintings, that wish had a clear visual expression.

Astrid Volquardsen, Foehr - Oktoberlicht
Pastel on board, 12x34cm


Astrid Volquardsen, Sylter Brandung 3
Pastel on board, 12x34cm


Astrid Volquardsen, Sanfte Brandung
Pastel on board, 12x34cm

(all images copyright Astrid Volquardsen
click on the images to visit Astrid's website)

These are some of Astrid's paintings but do check out her blog and website too. Curiously, Astrid lives just some 30 miles from my parents' place, what a funny small world this is, some times.

• Astrid Volquardsen's blog: http://pastellbilder.blogspot.com/

• Astrid's website: http://www.pastellbilder.de/

As a reminder, I got myself this for my 2009 calendar:

click on image to see a slideshow of the calendar

Which one for a postcard?

I thought I'd ask you for your thoughts on this one:

With the exhibition coming closer, I'm trying to decide which scene to take for a promo postcard.

I've had a couple of cards made a while back, but I want to have one of the pieces in the exhibition to feature on the postcard and none of the previous motifs will go to the exhibition. I also want something that gives a sense of the work I've been doing recently (and that I want to do).

Here are a few examples - and I'd appreciate your thoughts and preferences on these.


A detail of one of the mixed media collages such as this one:


Sunny, cheery gouache and pastels on paper - and a definite landscape:

Another definite landscape - less cheery, a bit more recent:


Or a bit less recent again, less landscape, still mixed media, no glue and limited palette?


Well... I think I've got my favourite - which is yours?

Found papers. From somewhere. Project

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
mixed media collage on paper

Yesterday's mail brought a lovely surprise: Lindsay had sent me the first installment of found papers from her day-to-day. I had mentioned to her an idea for a project that had been rumbling around my mind for a wee while: doing collage as in glueing paper onto paper is even more fun if the paper glued onto each other is found, not bought - found papers are those stumbled upon, incidentally or even accidentally - and most of Picasso's and Braques's papiers colles and Schwitters's Merzmalerei assembled such found papers.

With many of my friends and colleagues scattered across Europe and further afield, I wondered if they would not send me some found papers from their day-to-day lives - Found papers. From Somewhere.

Found papers could be tickets, sweet wrappers, flyers, beer mats, posters, - whatever can be easily posted, isn't bought for its own sake, and could be glued onto something else...

Lindsay's mailing now prompted me to finally pull these ideas together, to make up a small flier and to send it to the people I know elsewhere.

Similarly, if you're reading this and would like to be part of it, just drop me an email - see address on the sidebar and I could send you some more details.

The plan is to collect found papers over the next few months and then develop them into a series of collages - I don't have a much clearer idea than that at the moment, but am sure it'll develop - most art projects do that.

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,

Mixed media collage on paper

.

The Eldon Group. Exhibition 16-30 June 2008

Kelvinbridge Roofs, Acrylics on Canvas,
45x60cm, Gesa Helms 2006

The Eldon Group. Exhibition 16-30 June 2008
Paintings and works on paper in acrylics, oil and mixed media.
St Andrews Building, University of Glasgow.

That is what we will do in summer - a group exhibition with my favourite painting group. It looks funny spelled out that way - suddenly there is name. It's been Tom's suggestion: to name after the street where we meet - very traditional. And it's nice to know that Tom had been thinking about this name and this project for a long time before the group constellation became one where a joint exhibition became possible. Today, he brought some fantastic books with font types - he had trained as a graphic designer in London in the 1950s and does the most amazing modernist plays with colour and form.

So, contacts are collected, plans are made and all the time, I'm very excited about this.

There will be more detail to follow in due course. But the painting above is a first taster. It's the view from our studio space right in the heart of Glasgow's West End.

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Plan no 2

Part of plan 1 - a week up far North West Highlands in late-September to paint in oils with David Tress has already been scuppered due to slowness in decision-making on my part [the course is already fully boooked], I thought I'd write a bit more about plan 2 - mixed media and line work... and make other plans for a glorious highland/island summer holiday...

Using the sketchbook much more extensively over the past six months has been really good, not just as source of inspiration but also as a more sustained focus on lines and markmaking with drawing media. The line drawings in December have gone towards addressing my hangups about drawing trees - btw: thank you to all of you who've left such nice comments of late :).

So, one thing I want to do more of is using paper-based works in a way that becomes more minimalist - if that makes sense. The quick sketches out in the fields where a first attempt of that and while part of it is the time constraint, I also very much enjoyed the indicative, subtle and ambiguous type of marks left. I want to explore that more, and also the extent to which collage can facilitate this - as in: do more so that it becomes less, or: how little can you do to get more...

This may sound far too woolly and mysterious but I think it's a plan that is only becoming formulated - in the meantime, it'll be about drawing and markmaking - I hope to find something in the way of life classes to help me in this too, but that'll be later on in Spring, I think.

So: as a starter a limited palette ink drawing with a bit of collage.

Fields study, Ink and collage on paper, 28x21cm

And: I had to laugh when I went shopping for my missing oil colours - excited to find the missing essentials I spend a lot of money on: yellow, red and blue - my friend to whom I paraded my acquisitions on Monday did look a bit perplexed about my excitement with these very plain choices.


.

Plan no 1

Conifers on hillside no 1, 20x15cm
Oil and oil pastel on paper

... for this year (and future ones?) is about oil paint. It's about technique and about taking time to learn things properly. Early last year I had dabbled in oil, but then moved back to pastels and the increasingly mixed media artwork. I'll stick with that as plan 1b (that's the assorted pastels, gouache, acrylics and whatever comes along with it), but for the Saturday mornings up until summer I want to focus on oil painting technique.

Subject matter is a bit secondary at the moment, but I must admit that I keep circulating around the Northern Germany winter fields and woods - there's something there that wants a bit more expression - and it isn't homesickness. Yet, by developing a familiar (as well as well-known and comfortable) subject, I'll have more time for the technical explorations.

So, first off, there were a few studies with Sennelier oil bars (and some oil pastels on top) - I actually did these back in autumn, but yesterday I took them out for the first time.

Conifers on hillside no 2, 15x20cm
Oil and oil pastel on paper

The first technical bit will be more explicitly about colour mixing - and here I already stumbled over the oil bars - I got 10 or so as a set with a workshop. Yet - of course (and I should have known that before I got excited): other people's colour sets aren't really mine. So: what do I do with primary reds and blues when I got used to cerulean, ultramarine and alizarin crimson? Well: experiment and mix, I suppose. And in the worst case: flog them again.

I've got a strong sense where I want to get with those colours - I think that is probably also an advantage of knowing the landscape well - Those earth colours, a lot of umbers, some silvery greens. And yet, my paint tubes don't seem to easily get me there. Small amendments thus include cobalt blue and lemon yellow (no cadmium) as well as a primary (!) red.

.

Collage techniques

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
Mixed media collage, 40x30cm

... by Gerald Brommer (Watson-Guptill, 1994) is the title of my latest art book acquisition. I've been browsing through it and have been enjoying it very much so far.

The book features the works of many different (North-American) collage artists and starts off with an exploration into attitudes, materials, and techniques.

Rather than doing a proper book review - too close to my day job - here are a few of the eye-opening sentences from the introduction of the book. So, let me quote extensively (;))

Artists explore abstract, representational, semiabstract and nonobjective imagery through a variety of collage techniques. In some ways, collage lends itself best to dynamic and vibrant treatments of abstract and nonobjective imagery. Yet, as soon as I say those words, a transparency of a representational image jars my senses with its sheer beauty and simplicity. Collage is a layering of thoughs and ideas as well as of paper, fabric, glue, and paint. As they work, collagists amass history and emotion along with their gathered collage materials, and viewers add yet another layer of meaning. (p. 9)

Brommer continues further along this line of layering, adding history and presence:

The very gathering of materials is a historical process, and collages might even be considered biographies of the lives of the artists-or even as historical artefacts themselves. Collage artists often speak of providing a second life for found papers and objects... (ibid)

And so he writes on, and I am finding resonances with some of my previous thoughts and practice; e.g. in the way that findings enter works (see an earlier post on this here), but also how imagery are captured, mediated and transformed into something different, (as in this post on work flow).

Detail, Water spray and a low sun,
Mixed media collage, 40x30cm

The very idea of working with discarded, recycled, and found materials is working away in the background of my mind as a way of asking all my friends in far away places to send me some of their found papers and materials to be brought together in something new... oh, there seems to be another project for the future.

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Blog gagetry

I do occasionally phantasise about a modernist, minimalist flat and life: clean white lines, spaces and not much else. But everyone who's known any of my flats would laugh out loud at that thought: far too many books, things and generally life getting into the way of those clean white lines. - And quite rightly so getting into the way of them...

I feel that this blog is going quickly the same way... if you drop by here often you surely will have noticed how the sidebar is quickly cluttering up with assorted new items.

In particular the geotagging of the world map made my geographer's heart jump up in joy... and that was nonewithstanding of all the things that I know are wrong with equating people with where they are from (how often was I frustrated to being reduced to being someone's 'my German friend' LOL). But I've nonetheless been examining excitedly the map day by day to see if somebody new would pop up - in particular from those more exotic locations like Saudi Arabia, Hawaii and the middle of the Australian outback.

But also (and again my professional heart was put to contented rest), of course, these maps are gloriously inaccurate - first of all, many people never map onto them, but secondly, my mum would show up from anywhere across Germany (Hallo Jutti!!), similarly my friend in Israel from anywhere between Haifa and Jerusalem (I initially I did think my tagging for Israel, desert and Anna Ticho accounted for all those many Israelian hits, again LOL).

It's all good fun to pass the day (sorry: I mean evening, of course) nonetheless.

And an interesting aside has been that I've become much more confident with what any internet technology can do - just look at those photo lists on Flickr or the link to my Etsy shop, and I'm still fascinated how a couple of lines of words and numbers make the computer go elsewhere when you click here. - In the early 1990s I took some of the first computing classes in my school (in fact: the first girl to do so, if I remember) - but keeping in line with the gender stereotypes, I still have to write to this day a programme that actually does what I want it to do - just as well that html tags have got so much more easy.

Tree line repetition
Originally uploaded by gesah

But to end with something closer to paintings - I've started to put some of my reference photos onto a public site at flickr - they are largely landscapes, sky and cloud references so far - trying to keep a reference base for some of the sketches and studies I've been working on. In so doing, I am then, yet again, pleasing my utterly unmodernist self - filling, extending and cluttering to my heart's content.

Enjoy!

Festival sketching

I went to a music festival for the weekend - it took place in a beautiful part of Argyll, so for the landscape and for the people I took my sketchbook along. Yet, with it larger than my bag (note to self: get a smaller sketchbook when there is really no space extra) I left it at the place where we stayed.

Sketching all those people would have been a real challenge for me - with some life drawing I can get to grips with more detailed anatomy but the generic 'masses of people in a distance' way of sketching still evades me. So, there's something else to add to my to do list: look up and find out how to do figures in groups, distance and in a general way.

Another visual arts-related observation concerned the sense of vibrancy and movement. How do you capture and (re-)present people moving, music in the air and vibrancy? I don't mean drawing people simply with their arms in the air or one foot off the ground but other ways of getting that sense of movement.

I tried to get to this sense with one of the desert paintings - the Spring in the Sky one here - where my initial impulse came from a drive through the desert on the way to Tel Aviv airport and one hill after another buzzing by - yet, if you look at the resulting study, it is as static as can be: it ended up being about spring colours in the desert and there no sense of movement whatsoever.

Of course, the Italian futurist movement in the early 19th century, most notably Giocomo Balla's Dog on a leash, explored modernity through dynamic movement.

Giocomo Balla, Dog on a Leash,
oil on canvas, 1912, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy

I think I need another round of finding some information not only on the Futurists but also other ways of depicting and capturing movement.

A website I just came across in my search for Balla was the art education site Art in Motion - Capturing movement in art - initially targeting secondary school children, it offers a good starting point to the study of movement and the various ways to capture it in sculpture, painting and drawing.

Summer fruits

...continuing my mostly virtual celebration of summer (but: as we speak the sun is actually shining into my living room!!!), I found some more soft fruit in the shops... this time redcurrants, and made yet another batch of jam, this time with half redcurrants, half strawberries (for a fuller recipe, see this post here). I must admit that I always get excited at the sight of summer fruit and vegetable - something about its freshness and beauty. This was on my kitchen counter last night:

















While I've been sketching skies, clouds, rocks and trees this summer, I should take note and plan something on vegetable and fruit for the next summer... so, note taken.

I had started a few fruit sketches at my parents, and here's one with some plums on a branch.

Plums, Mixed media, sketchbook, 14x21 cm