Delighted to be Artist of the Month

I am delighted to once again be designated as Southport Contemporary Arts’ “Artist of the Month”.

As such, I have a trio of works on display in the window of the ArtHouse gallery in Eastbank Street, but which trio to choose?

I wanted something that represents my current work, but that work is not only experimenting with drawing and painting images that fascinate me, it is also inspiring and helping my students with their work.

The latter will come into focus in the last 3 weeks of my tenure as Artist of the Month, because from May 6 to 24, I am sharing the entire gallery with works by my tutored students.

That exhibition will also include my paintings and drawings so that made selecting just 3 for this window display a bit easier!

The trio presented here typify my current work, much of which has been depicting the ever-changing shapes of clouds, especially at sunset when the light bounces off them in a fascinating array of shades.. . . no surprise that I love Monet’s work!

At the top is “Sunset over Scarisbrick”

This is an amalgamation of two photographs that my sister, Caroline, took looking across the fields from her stable yard in Scarisbrick one evening.

I took the tree silhouette and lower level clouds from one photo and the top level clouds from the next because they had such an amazing set of patterns and colours.

I did the base of the painting in watercolours and added the soft cloud shapes and colours in soft pastel.

In the joint exhibition with my students, you will see the way many of them have started experimenting with watercolour and soft pastel together as well as trying their hands at sunset scenes.

At the bottom of the display is “Mists across the farmlands”

Having been experimenting with the vibrant colours of sunset and the way the light bounces off the cloud patterns, I changed to the gentle shades of early morning for this watercolour painting.

It was also the first time that I had chosen to also depict a blanket of mist rolling in across a rural landscape. It was the experimental painting that led to the large landscape that I will be using in the window display in my joint exhibition with my students.

In the middle of the window display is a pet portrait in soft pastel. It is my latest portrait of Ezra, my 19-month-old Westie.

When I took some photos of him playing in the garden a few weeks ago there was one where he was stood four-square in that classic Westie pose with that adorably cute expression on his face that is the epitome of his character, so it's called “Ezra Can Take on the World”

I just had to do another portrait of him . . . it’s now his 4th portrait! While the other two pictures are for sale, this one isn’t but is an example of pet portraits that you can commission me to do.

Now it might seem a strange mixture having two landscapes and a pet portrait, but that also sums up my art work.

You see, I have been drawing and painting for nearly half a century after having been taught by a Royal Academy-trained teacher who inspired in me a life-long love of art and the confidence that I could draw and paint anything.

Having been given the confidence as a young art student that I can draw and paint anything, that’s precisely what I do!

I draw in pencil and pastel and I paint in oils, acrylics and watercolour, as well as frequently mixing any combination of those media. Because I can use them all I know which ones will best achieve the effects I am looking for in creating the image that I want to bring to life.

I literally do pet & people portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, flowers, birds, animals and the occasional abstract. It is whatever I, or my commissioner, want me to create, or sometimes just what appears on the canvas.

Because of that diverse art experience, alongside decades of teaching in FE and HE, I can also help my students to turn their creative ideas into works of art. To do that, I established the “You CAN Draw and Paint Academy” and for the last 10 years I have been teaching artists in both France and UK that they, too, CAN draw and paint.

You can see this for yourselves if you are in Southport between May 6 and 24, as a dozen of my wonderful tutored students and I have our joint exhibition aptly titled “We CAN Draw and Paint” at the ArtHouse gallery in Eastbank Street, Southport.

You can even come along on Saturday May 17 and meet some of the artists . . . but more of that event in my next blog.

Landscapes AND pet portraits??