Sadie in under thirty minutes

Sadie, 20 minutes, 17 x 12 cm, pastel on paper 

 Sadie is slight and not tall.  Fitting her on the page when she is stretched out is problematic… she only fills a little of the space. I took the Felicity House approach to masking the background with white and then erased the white to find the body in the drawing at the top.  Sadie grew and shrank into the space until I got her proportions right and her right heel into the frame. I wasn't sure about the bright pink ground but surprise.  It worked.

Sadie, 10 minutes, 12 x 18 cm, pastel on paper

I suspect this drawing was less than ten minutes.  Sue had lost track of time and when she called time I had only just begun. Later we returned to the pose but Sadie's head was entirely different so I began again in a book.

Sadie, 25 minutes, 13 x 20 cm, pastel on book page

Sadie, 20 minutes, 13 x 16 cm, pastel on paper

Sadie, 10 minutes, 10 x 10 cm, pastel on paper

Some Visual Storytelling in the 303rd RBA Exhibition

It's all so subjective… the way a painting can reach down into you and make you feel something. Yesterday I visited the Royal Society of British Painters for the private view. I have two pieces in the show and it was fun to see my work on the wall and watch people looking at them, reacting to them, but it was also a chance for me to see the work of those I admire and to speak to a few of the artists to say how much I am inspired by their work. I have chosen a few which, for me, are exquisite pieces of visual story-telling to share.  If you can, go to the exhibit which is on from today through the 29th of Feb.  You can see the catalogue here: https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/royal-society-british-artists-303rd-annual-exhibition-2020

Briget Moore

Bridget Moore 

Bridget Moore, above, tells stories about memories from childhood. As I peer into the windows of her past I am the child and feel my arms stretch, the hoop go round and hear the dog barking. Her beautiful sense of colour, texture, form, composition… these very strong, yet small, paintings stir me.

Robert E Wells

Robert Wells made one of my favourite paintings at last years' exhibition and this year his painting of his daughter was one which my family and I returned to often. He uses paint in a way that tells stories we can all remember too. He also evokes an age of painting and a fight with paint that makes his message especially poignant.

Below are two paintings by Alan Lambirth, but they are not the paintings in the exhibition. Alan doesn't have a presence on the internet, his work is not in the catalogue or in the online catalogue, so you will have to go to the exhibition to see his beautiful, beautifully framed vignettes of life. I think his work is all on the small wall, around the corner from my work.  Like everything I am showing you, I would have any of his on my wall! 

Alan Lambirth

Alan Lambirth Winner of the Michael Harding Award II
'Afternoon Tea'

Richard Sorrel

Richard Sorrel captures humanity with all its flaws.  His gestural people are both beautiful and amusing. Richard works on a small scale and on a large scale!

Shanti Panchal

Shanti Panchal evokes a world where the light is brighter and even the more mundane becomes exotic. I love his sense of colour, the way he builds his surface and how he can conjure a place with a face.

Melissa Scott-Miller

Melissa takes apart london life and reflects it back to us so we are part of it. I have watched her work and her process is unique and results in these slices of London life that are instantly recognizeable and tell her story and our story. Up close the detail and the way she dabs paint unlocks a unique vision.

Annie Boisseau

When I think of Annie Boisseau I think of smaller oils painted on board.  They are each little gems. This luminous oil on canvas stopped us all in our tracks, though… It is bigger and what colour! Annie sketches outside and works in her studio to paint. The quality of light, the abstracted nature of the paint blend to create a place that you want to walk into.

John Pryke does something similar with pastel. His sky makes me look up at all skies, to feel I am there during the day and to promise to look harder the next time I am out at night.

John Pryke

The work I had accepted for this show is different to the work I responded viscerally to at the exhibition.  That is curious.  A few years ago I read Art as Therapy, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-as-Therapy-Alain-Botton/dp/0714865915/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=art+as+therapy&qid=1582196235&sr=8-1

by Alan De Boton and John Armstrong  which postulates that one thing we find in art is what we don't have, or what we need in order to balance ourselves. 

I work in a few different media to do different things in the work I make. You can see the variety on my website. https://www.rebeccaguyverart.com 

When I talked to Alan and Bridget we all agreed that you do what you do. When I bumped into Mary (in front of Bridget Moore's work) who I met at a course delivered by Daniel Shadbolt, we agreed that there is something special in ambiguity.

Rebecca Moss Guyver - Colour of Dahlias after Frost

Rebecca Moss Guyver - We Three Kings

A crush of visitors at the Mall Galleries

Hope you get a chance to visit this wonderful show! there was much much more that I liked and loved.  I'm sure you will find your own too.

Here we go again… It's time to choose between three!

Colour After Frost, egg tempera on panel, 23 x1 6 cm

Dahlia for Remembrance, egg tempera on panel, 26 x 20 cm

We Three Kings II, egg tempera on panel, 26 x 20 cm

If you follow my blog you will know that this summer I had two pieces selected by the RBA.  The selection process has come around again very quickly… they have moved the RBA's date back to its usual slot.  For the RBA, this change back was desireable and that means I need to choose something to submit by the end of this month.  These are my three most recent egg tempera pieces. I can submit more than two pieces but I have 'capped' my submissions at two. Which two do you think I should submit? 

A few new opened books

Villa Fiorita, pastel on book pages, 29 x 20cm

When I first started making opened books I remember someone saying that it would scare them to begin drawing on the prepared supports. they worried that if it were them they would 'ruin' the page.

Getting the page ready for my image does take time… First I have to find the book; then I need to find the pages that might speak to something I look at.  Next I have to prepare the books.  These days I like to take pages out of the books so I can have additional pages to work on, so I scan the pages as I go through the book, looking for words and ideas, cut pages out, and then glue them all together.  Once that's done, I press the opened book between books to flatten and dry, I use clear gesso on the top pages then mask and coat the pages with some pastel ground mixed with a colour. It's a couple of hours just to the point to beginning a drawing. 

Luckily a simple eraser removes my marks if I don't like what I do, so 'ruining' a page isn't a problem.

The Blue Hills, pastel on book pages, 30 x 21cm

One of my collectors wants a few more of these books so I am seeing what I can come up with. I have been going through my sketchbooks, trawling through my summer photos and looking at the prepared pages for inspiration.

Islanders Sea-breeze, pastel on book pages, 25 x 18 cm

As Spring Becomes Summer

Tulip Blossom Pear, egg tempera on panel, 27x24 cm, 

I find that so much of what I begin with feels intuitive but may actually be intentional, even though my mind hasn't caught up with what I'm responding to yet. 

I picked some flowers from the garden, wanted to use the dress I'd impulsively bought at a charity shop that was a great colour and had a great pattern but that I would never wear. I liked the idea of the IBBI bowls inside one another… As I was matching things, trying to get the balance (without thinking about it) I chose some similar blue items with bits of bright red on them. I needed height and structure to work, orange, green, more fascia.  The last few items and re-arranging them always takes the most real looking and nudging time.  The green cup on the right came towards the end of the painting, not part of the original still life at all but necessary in the end.

So what's it all about? Why did I gravitate towards those colours in the first place? I'm not sure that I can answer truthfully now that I am done but it was starting to get hotter, the tulip and the figure has a blossom feel, it's all making me feel exuberant... but is that language or what I was looking at? It felt wholesome and fecund, how do you show that, create that mood? 

Which of the players in the arrangement did I want to focus on, what does that say about my mood, the season, my thinking?  Is it really just a case of nostalgia or that thing that I love about pattern and colour? You tell me.

An Afternoon of drawing with Annabel

drawing 4, Whatfield, - looking uphill at sun, 16 x 18 cm

Even though it was a bit misty, the pastel colours glowed yesterday. Annabel took me to some of her favourite spots.  I had my french easel that I use as a table and my travelling pastel 'kit' -just little bits of broken pastels in two tins: hots and colds. I also had some chinese ink, a couple of brushes and my sketchpads. 

drawing 1, Semer, Blackthorn and Hill, 17x 15 cm

drawing 3, Annabel and the Sheep, 16 x18 cm

drawing 4, The Colour of Spring, 12x13cm

A dance of colour with Doreen

Doreen in motion with sheer cloth

We began with a long very slow movement by Doreen with cloth. It was long enough to say something about the shape and movement but not long enough to resolve anything. 

On the heels of Tim's workshop, using pastels instead of a paintbrush, I worked small and directly, looking for the colour and the tone but intending colour studies rather than accurate colour.  For me, today, the goal was to create believable light by approximating the relationship between the tones and colours without being slavish to skin tone. 

5 mins 10x10cm

5 mins 10x10cm

5 mins 10x10cm

25 mins 12 x16cm

Drawing the model like a still life

 Having spent the last few days making lots of little still life drawings, directly, I wanted to think of the model as a still life today and see what that frame of mind would do to the drawings. I moved around the paper looking for shapes and colours, tones and light - swapping pastels, adding ink, beginning with ink, Using a big fat brush, working small, smaller, bigger - trying to hold the pastel gently, to use both the end and the side, to keep it dry and to work into wet and to think about the edges. This is the order of the poses. The first was 15 minutes then Sue decided we needed some quickies - 3 minutes, then back to two fifteens and finishing with a thirty.

Highs and Lows of early 2019

Since mid Feb I have sold these ten pieces.  I sold at Thorpe Morieux Creation https://www.facebook.com/ThorpeMorieuxCreation/,  the Cocobelle event at Boxted Hall https://www.cocobelleevents.co.uk, a private sale from Instagram, and Suffolk Open Studios 2019 Showcase Exhibition at the Apex, Bury St Edmunds. https://suffolkopenstudios.org That's a high!

Here are some facts:

• all of the exhibitions have been local
• I showed a total of 22 pieces at the exhibitions
• I showed 1 portrait
• I showed 13 stilllifes
• I showed 3 landscapes
• I showed 6 'opened books'
• I showed 3 egg temperas
• I showed 13 pastels on paper or board
• 1 monotype miniprint from the browser was sold.  I think there were about 12 things in the browser.
• prices ranged from £150 - 340, framed.

Meanwhile, although I had a piece preselected for the Royal Portrait, ultimately I was unsuccessful. This was an egg tempera of Figgy. I submitted just below the maximum for the New English Art Club annual open exhibition, and had nothing preselected.  I sold three things as a drawing scholar last year at that event. I continue to submit for shows outside my local area but it's tough to get noticed. It's all 'art tax' but my success rate in early 2019 is certainly a low!