The past few months have seen me relocate from rural Suffolk to city life in the north east. I am travelling a lot, returning to Suffolk as I complete my degree at UCS.
I have been working on a couple of acrylic paintings on canvas which look at my contrasting lives between these two locations and study my physical geographical positions comparing the trajectory of the sun’s path around my two dwellings. Pitching my easel outside, I have used colour in a way that I feel directly represents the suns passage over twenty four hours. Within this I have also attempted to capture the various moods experienced as a result of sun’s effect.
Lately I have become fascinated with knitting and have been using basic stitches and a wide colour palette to experiment with the endless effects of texture and colour combinations that one can achieve. I discovered the amazing work of Kaffe Fassett several years ago. Fassett works in the fields of knitting and needlepoint achieving wonderful results with fabulous designs and exquisite use of colour which I find so inspiring.
Last weekend I travelled to Liverpool, a city of great architectural contrasts, with Victorian terrace houses through to ultra modern buildings around the waterfront area. Some of these later buildings would look quite at home in somewhere like Chicago with it’s futuristic cityscape.
I took in three galleries on my visit including the Open Eye Gallery, currently exhibiting the work of photo journalist Letizia Battaglia, in a show entitled Breaking The Code Of Silence. Battaglia works in black and white to great effect. The photographs portraying sometimes harrowing scenes of life in Sicily during the 1980s.
I also took in the Tate and was particularly interested to see work by Louise Bourgeois, one of the artists I looked at in my dissertation. A series of copperplate etchings, drypoint and aquatint on paper entitled Topiary: The Art of Improving Nature 1998. This work looked at a tree trunk and the way trees are shaped through topiary. Gradually transforming into a human female form and how female identity is formed. The underlying feeling left quite a dark impression so typical of Bourgeois’ powerful and insightful work.
The Walker Gallery was showing David Hockney Early Reflections and featured Hockney’s Californian work. Having seen A Bigger Picture at London’s Royal Academy it was quite intriguing to compare the range of scale of work Hockney has encompassed in his career from A Bigger Splash to A Bigger Picture, and consider the significance or coincidence of the use of the word ‘bigger’.
The modern building containing the Museum of Liverpool, like the rest of the city, still manages to attract visitors from around the world. Mostly they come as a result of The Beatles effect. Proving the group’s music is still as strong as ever so long after they broke up.
