Merry Christmas!

Bauble
© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

As Christmas approaches and the year draws to a close, it's time to take stock. Eight of my paintings are on show at b Gallery in Toddington; I have a raft of ideas for paintings in the coming months, which I hope to get started on once Christmas is over. And I've begun, tentatively, to make linocut prints; it'll take a while to get the results I want, but every journey starts with a single step, as they say!

2009 has been quite a year, both personally and art-wise; I feel that I've learnt a lot and will continue to learn more. And just as importantly, I've had a lot of fun!

I'd like to wish a Merry Christmas to anyone reading this blog; and may 2010 be everything you'd like it to be.

Blessings x

b-loomin' marvellous!

my paintings at b Gallery

© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

I've just got home from the b Gallery Opening Day, and boy, has it been a success. There were a lot of people at the pre-launch party last night, mainly exhibiting artists and a few friends, and the trend continued today; when we arrived at lunchtime the place was packed with eager art-lovers. As I walked through the front door someone was leaving clutching one of my photo prints - let's hope that's a sign of things to come!

Demo in one of the downstairs rooms

© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

The range of art is stunning. And there is so much; paintings in the hallway and up the stairs; fine art in reception where prints by Rolf Harris, Fletcher Sibthorpe, Beryl Cook and Jack Vettriano sit alongside wonderful jewellery, glass art and a variety of cards; paintings, jewellery, glass and more cards (including mine!) in a lovely relaxing square room beyond which we all agreed was so cosy we could live in it, and where today two wonderful artists were demonstrating their work; and even paintings in the small back room where Judi Menges was demonstrating glass art and Sara Wickenden was working in wax encaustic - and that was just downstairs!

A cosy corner downstairs at b Gallery with some of Judi Menges' glass art on the wall at the end

© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

Upstairs is a huge room running the width of the building where at least thirty local artists have paintings, photos and prints on display. There are browsers everywhere full of tempting unframed pieces (and yes, I was tempted!). All in different styles to suit every taste. Today was also a great opportunity to chat to other artists and photographers - many of whom were doing demos too. There was even some art in the loo!

Watercolours and prints on display upstairs

© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

The building itself is something of a star in its own right. Old and beamed, it has a distinct character which lends charm & intimacy to the gallery; to emphasise this Mel and Julie have cleverly created several cosy corners with seating throughout the building, which gives parts of the gallery the ambience of a mad art collector's living room. I'm so pleased to be associated with b Gallery and I hope today is the first of many successes for this amazing new venture!

Sue Wookey's paintings and another cosy corner
© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

b is for . . .

b Gallery will be opening in the Old Town Hall, a historic building in the centre of Toddington
© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

. . Burnell (Melanie) and Boyle (Julie), who this weekend are opening b Gallery, an exciting new venture in the Old Town Hall building in the centre of Toddington. You can read more about it (and get directions) here. The Gallery Opening Day is this Saturday 5th December, from 10am to 5pm, and Melanie & Julie are promising collectable fine art, local crafts, jewellery and some of the area's finest local artists. There will be demos, turkey rolls & mulled wine and Father Christmas too!

a wide variety of work in the beamed upper gallery

© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

I will have paintings on show there, along with some prints, photos, unframed originals & cards; I'm one of around thirty or so artists exhibiting and there is a wide variety of work in the gallery to suit all tastes, from the traditional to cutting edge. Sue Wookey and Judi Menges from Artscape Arts will also be there. I'm at b Gallery for at least three months, depending how things go.

And it's strangely liberating having so few paintings left at home. Almost like a clean sheet to start again!

Getting it Right in Black and White

marks using tin lids and card
monoprint © Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

Well, I achieved one of my ambitions last Sunday when a friend and I attended a printmaking course at the Eagle Gallery, Bedford. Followers of this blog may recall that I discovered the lure of printmaking back in the Summer, when I watched a couple of demos at art fairs and fell in love with the whole idea. The one-day course was an opportunity for a dozen of us to try out monoprint, drypoint and linocuts and to find out which techniques intrigued us the most!

We spent a couple of hours on each one; I started with monoprinting, under the guidance of Mike Townesend. We rolled our our ink to the correct "swishy" consistency, made a few marks with bits of card and jar lids and - wow! instant artworks with a wonderful unpredictability about them. Mike showed us how to use newspaper stencils to create special effects; how to trace over a drawing to reproduce it on the paper; and how to put an image under the inking glass and paint it onto the glass to produce a reversed-out print. We were only a third of the way through the day, and I was inky and hooked!














A moody view of the Skelligs
drypoint © Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

After a short break Eric Seeley showed us drypoint; scratching an image onto the surface of special plastic using a nail. It was hard work but produced the most beautiful effects; particularly if you took care when rubbing the ink away on the highlighted areas. Our images came out reversed but I've flipped the one above to show the best effect! The only disadvantage I found was that drypoint used oil-based inks, which were in my fingernails for a week. The water-based inks used in monoprinting and linocutting were far easier to deal with!


















door, Cardinal's Wharf
linocut © Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

Our final session was linocutting with Su Kiteley. She had various tips and hints - such as warming the lino on a radiator beforehand to make it more pliable, and painting its surface with white emulsion to show the design more easily. We used tracing and carbon paper to reproduce an image (the right way round). After a couple of false starts - and stern reminders to keep my fingers out of the way of the cutting tools - I really got into it and was delighted with the final result, which was only marred by my last-minute decision to include some shadows. At this point I forgot my reversed-out thinking and made them white, not black. Call it artist's licence!

It was a fabulous experience and I've had a go at home already. The results are looking promising . . . !!!

London calling

Cardinal's Wharf
© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

It's almost Halloween, and the last of the leaves are clinging bravely to the trees in a wonderful Autumnal display. At last I'm managing to get the rest and relaxation I need to recharge my batteries and my enthusiasm. It's been a busy time at work, and I've felt quite frustrated having to spend my days in an office rather than painting, but of course it keeps the wolf from the door. And London can be a wonderful source of inspiration; I'm lucky enough to work right by the Thames at Bankside, an area of the most amazing history for those who care to dig deep enough (sometimes literally!). So I've decided to use my experiences of the area to produce some London-based art, starting with the pen-and-wash drawing above.

Cardinal's Wharf nestles right between the Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern. I pass it every morning but of course it wasn't until I started to paint it that I really, really looked at it; began to wonder who lived there; what the significance of the flagpole & coats of arms are, and so on. Some of the answers can be found here.

Having made the decision to use my time on Bankside to produce some paintings, my ideas are starting to crystallise, and I'm feeling more optimistic. Yes, I'm painting again!

Here be there dragons

It's the middle of October and the nights are drawing in. My overwhelming urge at this time of year is to go into hibernation mode; I haven't felt like doing a great deal of painting recently, but last weekend I decided to cheer myself up by some doodling with gouache - a medium which I don't use very much - and found myself creating a dragon - my first, in fact. As you can see, he's not a scary dragon, but quite dynamic nevertheless. He's given me a few ideas; in fact, I have almost too many at the moment. Some I thought were fixed keep changing, too, which is making it hard to get to grips with anything new!

My First Dragon
© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

It's only now I can take an objective look back at Open Studios and recognise how well things went. My fellow-exhibitors and I agreed that the best thing about it was the opportunity to meet and discuss art with the general public; our own art, each other's art, and - in many cases - the visitors' art. And this year I've had a taste of something less easily defined: the thrill you get when your work touches somebody. It's not shared vision, exactly - everybody's coming from their own standpoint, after all - but something in your work which resonates with them.

When one of my paintings struck a chord with people, their pleasure with it made me revisit it again in my mind; I recalled the scene which inspired the painting and the fun I had creating it. Someone bought a print of a favourite photo; reminding me of what I loved about it in the first place. So. although it's a difficult time of year for me, I'm keeping positive. The dragon, after all, is a symbol of life force and great potency. Perhaps I should frame him and put him on the wall to inspire me!

Exhibitions are like buses . . .

Paula's Pansy - an early work!

© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2007

It's the end of September, and the final day of our exhibition at Artscape. It's been really strange with so few paintings in the house: apart from the ones at Artscape, one of my early works - Paula's Pansy - has been gracing the walls of Wesley's Coffee Shop at the Methodist Church in the High Street all month as part of a general Open Studios promotion in Harpenden. The Marbre Therese at Portmagee and Lavender Fields have just gone over to Letchworth for the forthcoming Open Exhibition at the Letchworth Arts Centre.

And last weekend I took three of my Tolkien paintings to the annual Tolkien Society Oxonmoot conference in Oxford, where there is a regular Art Exhibition. This year we were at Lady Margaret Hall. The event attracts a lot of Society members, many of whom visit the exhibition during the course of the weekend. Those of us exhibiting have the opportunity to hang our work alongside established Tolkien artists such as Ted Nasmith, Ruth Lacon and Jef Murray. The Oxonmoot Art Show is organised by Becky Hitchin, who also exhibits her work at the show. There were Tolkien-related lectures throughout the weekend, and the chance to catch up with old friends. You can read more about this year's Oxonmoot - and previous Tolkien-related events - here.

Exhibitions are like buses really . . . none for ages, then loads all at once. I'm still painting, though, and should have something new to post here soon!

A Room with a View

l - r: Betty's illustrations, my watercolours & Sue's paintings and Vanessa's acrylics © Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

A Private View, to be precise. Friday night saw we five ladies of Artscape Arts nervously fluttering around in the upstairs room at Artscape, Harpenden's premier supplier of art, craft & office materials (and fine framing), taking each other's photos in front of our work and wondering how many of the invited guests would come along to see our exhibition, and how we were going to eat all the food we'd laid on if the turnout was low.













Judi's glass art display and a little something for the guests' refreshment! © Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

We needn't have worried. Around fifty wonderful friends, relatives, fellow artists and other interested parties enjoyed the evening, including Rosemary Farmer, the Town Mayor, who, it transpires, is an art lover. There was plenty for everyone to look at, too: Sue's vibrant paintings inspired by ancient landscapes, Betty's amazing illustrations done for Vogue in the 1940s, Vanessa's bold, bright acrylics, Judi's beautiful glass pieces and my watercolours of Kerry and anything else which takes my fancy - I'm showing Swan and May Evening, Harpenden Common, amongst others!













The 'miscellaneous' wall: Betty's & Sue's watercolours alongside my photos and a life study by yours truly; and 'card corner' - Sue's above, mine below and Judi's to the side! © Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

The main aim of the evening was for the guests to enjoy the art, and the food, and meet and chat to the artists - which they did - and during the course of the evening I was encouraged to find I'd sold some prints and cards as well. Preparing for this exhibition - and our Open Studios days on 12th, 17th - 19th and 24th - 26th September, when some of us will be at Artscape doing demos and chatting to the public - has been a long hard slog, but Friday made it all worthwhile.

Many thanks to my fellow artists Sue, Judi, Betty and Vanessa; to Jon the invaluable Artist's Assistant; and especially to Gamet, David, and the rest of the team at Artscape for their support.

Beauty & Fragility

August is drawing to a close, and what a wierd month it's been. It started with a much-needed holiday, and has ended in the chaos of pressure at work, preparations for Open Studios, and grief at the passing of a dear friend.

In the midst of all this I've managed to produce a painting. As it's impossible to paint anything properly without concentrating on it totally, for a few hours I've simply put my cares aside and wielded my brushes. And I've ended up with this - something totally unlike my usual style.

Somehow it seems fitting right now to reflect on how beautiful and fragile and precious life is. I hope this picture will help us all to do just that.


















butterfly
© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

Out and about with the HVAF

HVAF stall at Sunday's Farmers Market, Harpenden
© Teresa Kirkpatrick 2009

Half a dozen of us spent yesterday morning manning a stall at the Farmers Market in Harpenden to promote the Harpenden artists taking part in this year's Open Studios. This annual event, organised by the HVAF, takes place each September throughout Hertfordshire, and gives the general public the opportunity to visit artists in their studios (or other appropriate venues), discuss their work, and take a look at how the artists go about the process of producing art. The HVAF is a non-profitmaking charitable organisation dedicated to promoting and supporting the visual arts in and around Hertfordshire.

There are twenty-four Harpenden-based artists taking part this year: not just painters, but artists in glass, ceramics, jewellery and textiles. Five of us are exhibiting as "Artscape Arts" at Artscape, the local art supplies store in Southdown, throughout September, with Open Studios on selected days. Others are opening their homes or workshops for the event. The general public certainly responded well to our market stall yesterday; lots of people came over for a closer look and went away with a brochure. In fact we ran out of brochures, there was so much interest!

Further information on Herts Open Studios is available from http://www.hvaf.org.uk/