When I was studying at university, it was a time when health and safety was just beginning to be a big deal. We did wear our Mickey Mouse ears when using power tools and respirators when working with resins and solvents. However, this practice wasn’t generally carried out when one wasn’t working. Continue reading →

“The Party’s Over” (what happened next?!)

What have I done?! 
Setting a challenge to produce a piece of artwork so depicting how you feel about your favourite piece of music.

Well, it was a challenge for me, as I dare say for many of you.

I have named my paintings with a musical title and found one that I had done some years ago of a pair of shoes lying on a discarded evening dress with my favourite silver bracelet so I called it “The Party’s Over” (what happened next?!)

“Port de Soller”

Then discovering a picture that I had painted in situ in my favourite holiday destination “Port de Soller” with a couple gazing out to sea on a sunny morning.

I titled this one “On days like these” by Matt Monro or it could have been Neil Diamond’s “Love on the Rocks”.

After being undecided these last six weeks, I decided to actually listen to some music. So, whilst playing a DVD of Einaudi’s haunting piano music especially, L’Onde, I found a piece of gessoed MDF & grabbed my acrylic inks and I poured, painted, stippled, glazed areas letting the ink take me into the music.

The whole process only took a couple of hours and when I had finished it felt like the end of lockdown.   
Maybe it’s a new me!

Hope all the members have enjoyed the challenge.

Jill Ilett

I am currently working on a self-initiated project to illustrate a book about King’s Lynn. It is a fascination town with much history. I felt inspired to create this project whilst invigilating at our summer exhibition in St Nicholas’ Chapel. One of the church staff was giving a guided tour about the church and was enthusiastically talking about the church’s history. This gave me the idea to create a book about the history of the town. I then spent many trips to King’s Lynn sketching around the town and taking photographs. Fortunately, when the first lock down happened, I already had a large number of images to be working from and have been able to continue since. I have so far created 10 drawings out of a list of 55 that keeps on growing as I discover more and more buildings to add!

When the book is complete, I hope to have it printed and perhaps crowd funded or sent to a publisher.

My process for creating each drawing involves:
1) drawing the outline in pencil
2) painting a wash of watercolour on areas to be in colour
3) adding detail to the drawing using colour pencil and graphite pencil

Izzy Wingham

Alexander of the second wave

What do you do if you are an artist and you are made to stay at home for a year?

Well, you produce art. And in my case, I’ve done so to such an extent, that the shed where I keep my finished works now resembles a crowd scene from a future dystopian world where random everyday objects have grouped together to start new lives of their own, and social distancing is strictly for the “Organics”.

Meanwhile, back in the real world. What is it that I have been making? I hear you ask.
My inspiration lately seems to be coming from the Classical world.

During the first lockdown, I created, from recycled milk bottles (one of my favourite materials) a life-size replica of a famous Michelangelo statue. When I say life-size, I mean the size of a person. Not the size of the original work.

I am keeping this one under wraps for the moment though. I don’t want to lessen the “Shock and Awe” value when it is finally unveiled at an exhibition.

All I can say is, it is surprising how much, from a distance, plastic milk bottles look like Carrara marble.

I have always been interested in Kinetic art. So, the next work that I produced, you may well have already seen. The mechanical Minatour called “Spode” (as in Spode china. You know? Bull in a china shop?) Anyway. The challenge with this one, was not constructing it, but in making the video that followed. Spode does not actually move on his own, but with the wonders of stop-go  animation he can be made to look that way. I did this using 300 separate still photographs to make the short film. The real task was synchronising the motion to the music. It kept me amused for many a long evening.

Finally, we come to my latest labour of love. I say that because I have spent more time producing this than anything else so far.
This one is entitled “Alexander of the second wave” (pictured)
I’m back on the recycled plastic here. Shampoo bottles, yoghurt pots, detergent boxes, whatever I could lay my hands on basically.
This is my re-creation of the mosaic of Alexander the Great that was un-earthed at Pompei. I am amazed at the level of detail in the original, considering it was made 2,000 years ago from tiny pieces of coloured stone. Apparently, they used a palette of 27 colours, compared to my measly 17. “Much respect. Romans”
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that in 2,000 years time someone might dig up one of our works of art, and try to copy it?
Oh, by the way. The second wave bit of the title is because I made it during the second wave of the pandemic.

Talking of which, being of mature years, I have had the jab now, and am feeling ready to face the world again.

And as for the shed full of “Non-Organics” Well, they seem to be multiplying of their own accord, and are now bursting out into the garden.
Only an exhibition can save us now.

Tom Sharp