new things!

On my table yesterday...

a new little 4x4 inch canvas and the plant that inspired it! A closer look here.

And here are some sketch book pages from the last month

I'm busy making things for the craft fair at the end of November... and getting used to a new routine, I've changed jobs and have an extra day for art!!! It's a real treat and hopefully I'll have lots more to show for it!

slow progress (is still progress)

A month ago I showed you a still life I'd set up, with the plan to get painting, well I haven't got around to starting a canvas yet, but I have done a few sketchbook drawings, and a gouache. By now the flowers are dead and the aloe vera needs to go back out in the garden for while! So I'll have to make a new arrangement and try again!

I have just about finished the felt dolls I've been making for the group exhibition 'this way madness lies', it opens next Friday at Tactile Arts.

This is the 3rd doll, it took a long time to finish because of sewing all those tiny beads on - half an hour a night for a week, so that I didn't go crazy but I did make a little bit of progress each time.

Here's the blurb I've written to go in the catalogue -

I was a crafty kid, always making something, knitting, sewing, trying everything from paper-making to macramé. In my teens I discovered Degas and the Impressionists, then Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse, and fell in love with painting.

Painting, drawing and lino-printing have been my focus for 20 years or more, but recently I’ve been wandering off the path and dabbling in all kinds of things. I get seduced by colour, I had a stash of gorgeous embroidery threads before I ever thought of going back to sewing.

When I first made these dolls they were supposed to be angry, voodoo dolls, but they turned out more like love songs to feisty women. I approach them like drawing. Cutting into the fabric is a way of making a line, a row of stitches is another. Think of them as fertility goddesses, or like paper dolls that can be decorated a thousand ways.

The craft fair - almost 2 weeks ago - was a lovely day, I didn't take my camera, I couldn't bear to carry one extra thing that I didn't have to! But you can see a lovely photo of my stall over here on flickr taken by one of the friends I shared a stall with Nat aka Smallest Forest does amazing embroidery, book binding, painting and more, and writes the most entertaining blog around - do check it out!