I couldnt get the image of the crocodile eating the moon that night out of my mind. This is an exploration, I am trying to find as ever a way to respond.
Continuing to develop my work , take steps to come out from under my rock, connect with other artists and get my work seen…..in any bit of time I can snatch.
Painting for pleasure
Feeling burnt out, shutting down and getting ready for a break, then like a gift courtesy of a Christmas party for the kids I was given some extra studio time I didn’t expect .With nothing planned I went up to the studio with the feeling I just wanted to paint, no other aim than to put paint on canvas, so that is what I did. The images I started were worked up from my quarry studies and prints, I liked how they were turning out. I feel sometime I over work and over think things; a tired mind can be an advantage in painting.
Thinking collage
Events have largely overtaken any making of art outside computer stuff this week, but my thinking has been centred on collage. I have started using paper in some work especially when working on panels, blank paper and some I have used in test monotype or to blot canvases. I now find I am thinking of expanding this collaging. On an ambitious note I had an inkling to render Hieronymus Bosh’s garden of earthly delights in green and blacks 85% chocolate wrappers (watch this space). I hope to give myself some time to experiment.
I did realise however that the way I am working in my job with the computer game environments at the moment is collage. Bringing together elements of photo imagery and building geometry objects to represent the places required. I could almost be sat with a big pile of magazines and a pot of glue and some card. Sorry I can’t say what game I am working on until the press release.
Oh my goodness I love paint!
Work, the computer stuff that is my job has been very intense lately. Just modeling and texturing, but there is a lot to get done… busy busy busy so that is 32 hrs of my week. Then there was my precious Tuesday when I have my my largest chunk of painting time. I got going on a quarry monotype , what joy, after a little I was so involved with the making of thick painty marks on the plate and the delicious colours smearing together all my tensions floated away. Is this why I do it? (I don’t seem to be able to sell any work at the moment ).When I can get so much joy from the doing how much does the end result matter. Obviously the painting can be a struggle, usually when the image doesn’t work out and I am fighting it, but even then the individual brush strokes and marks can be a joy. I thought the quarry print came out ok, its nice to feel satisfied with the end result even though if I wasn’t I would still keep making those marks.
New yet nothing new.
I was going to start a new blog, new project new line of thought , then it all spiralled back again and I am still thinking about how to make my crocodile . The shell work has stalled, I will pick it back up I always seem to, but now its lichenscapes, quarry’s and patterned stones, clouds and landscape details again . I have a feeling that the key to unlock the responses I am looking for may lie here in the patterns and colours, the details I can set my imagination to roam in . I remember as a child looking into the patterned carpets and sofas in our 1970s home having adventures in those twisting forms, imagining worlds and landscapes full of strange people and animals. So I will stick with this blog and try to keep it more regularly updated as I move towards my first solo show in 2012 .
Been busy I think…
Still no crocodiles, but there has been quite a lot going on. My news in amongst the making of, succeeding with and failings of my work is that I am finally getting some out there. I have recently joined a local multidisciplinary art group Moving Clay http://www.movingclay.com I joined in at short notice with an exhibition they were hanging at a Local Solicitors office, Jobling Gowler. Also the handing in for the much awaited East Cheshire Hospice Art fair http://www.theartofcaring.org.uk is next Tuesday. It will be good to get the work in and see it up at last, as I have had it ready for quite a while now. I did repaint one of the pieces I submitted and wasn’t happy with and was very pleased I did.
So it’s all on to new projects now, I still have a couple of works in progress to resolve but I am looking to move on with some different work. I am making studies of my collection of broken shells; I have been drawing them, photographing them and have started on some monotypes of them. Very exciting.
I was educated in Carlisle where I attended the Cumbria Collage of Art and Design. From there I went to Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham to do a BA(Hons) degree in Fine Art graduating in 1987. After spending a year or so in studios I went looking for art related employment. Working first in the Animation Industry and then moving into Computer Games. Now although still working and having two small children I am determined to pursue and develop my painting once more. www.deborahanngraham.co.uk
