blind drawing

I've lost my glasses so mornings are blurry.  I have been making anew habit of doing 'blind drawings' in the hour or so when I wake up.  They are B & W, using permanent archival ink pens on cartridge paper.  Later I scan and print them and have been working backinto them with colour.  I'm crazy about clear gesso at the moment for its transparency and because it creates such muted colour.

I\ve been doing two every morning and selecting on to use as my mailart. This was the second from the first day and it must have had something splashed on it.  It had a snow like quality so I worked back into it.

With Peter Lloyd-Jones in mind I looked at the kitchen table for inspiration.

I have done a few others but in this one I decided to add something that wasn't really in the view and to use some heightened, perhaps not so naturalistic colour to the image.  Then I nudged the colour a bit more in photoshop.

Trying to tame new ink

So inspiring to visit six stunning gardens yesterday.  Today it rained so was indoors more than usual and found time to think about some of the motifs from the day.  The sunhat was a recurring theme.

These new Akua Kolor inks just aren't behaving the way they did in England, so I am having to work back into prints.

These are postcard size but perhaps I can take some of the ideas and scale them up or translate them into a different material.

Mailart Makes the World a Town

I've been considering Cheryl Penn's 

http://cherylpenn.com/wpb/ 

mailart exhibition and celebratory zine for some time now.  I thought I was supposed to make four pages and I just couldn't find a way to do this until I got to Cranberry island. I borrowed and read a copy of the Black Mountain College pamphlet #4 about Ray Johnson and the final pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. 

I collected some lines from the pamphlet:

'Ray touched the letter 'm' which was an intitial of mother.'

Ultimately the most satisfying art for him was the art of friendship.'

'The signs along the street or highway were like art supplies for him.'

'He took a piece fromt he whole.'

Then I set off on a letter safari up the Crnaberry road.

These two images put together in a particular way form the first page.

Because I believed I was creating a series of four pages (hadn't read things properly) I wanted to create a progression towards the inevitable 'Mailart makes the world a town' and my world of lettuce was an image I began in England, dazzled by the leaves in my garden. There is also a nod to trashpo.

Marianne North was a Victorian painter/explore/plant hunter and her book Vision of Eden is a great read. She created a room of flower paintings a Kew in order to share the beauty of the world with all.

Finally the Island Mailart exhibition.

In order to make each pair of pitcures (Ray + salad) and (Marianne+exhibition) I had to integrate some of the imagery from the other pair.  If you are a Zine recipient - you might see how I worked it all out.

missing letter!

5/6 of these arrived on Cranberry Island for the Island Mailart Exhibition.  Apparentl 'L' is outstanding.  Why does that happen and how will it change things?

Island Castaway?

When I was in Kenya Sabra sent me a card of Christo's wrapping of Manhattan - one of my islands.  A paint sample colour took me to Christo.  The word castaway  made me hear the theme tune from Gilligan's island.  Did you know they only ran for three seasons? It felt like my whole childhood. As a teen Patrick Denver came to Cranberry Island, my real island, for the summer.  Patrick was John Denver's son.  John Denver was Gilligan.  We had Gilligan junior on our island.

Making Meaning with Abstract Ideas

I'm following the conversations on IUOMA more now and getting to know some of the artists and their work.  I find it inspirational! I get things in the post and these provoke reactions and experiments.  On some days i have an idea and I pursue it.  On others, everything that has been feeding me rattles around in that intuitive space.  I do much more abstract playing. This declared itself as a landscape, I called it Sea View.  But what if it were turned this way...

Conversation in Studio?
Conversation with inner self in studio?

Early morning. Not a creature was stirring so I needed to be quiet too. Nothing but a permanent marker and an envelope from the recycling house - gouache later.  Light, clutter, peace. Mother's day.