the art goes on

Byzantium Lady, 2012 collaborative work by Pearl and Rodney Swansborough

I finished the Byzantium Lady yesterday and Rodney put it on a stretcher this morning. Now finished it measures 72x49cm. I am really pleased how she turned out, very exotic!

The Murrurundi Arts Council has invited me to do an art workshop next year, probably around March/April so I will teach something based on this mixed media portraiture method. It will be a 2 day weekend workshop being tutored in the techniques I've developed to embellish a portrait of your choice. Students will learn how to layer and combine paint, stencilling, machine embroidery and applique to create an image on canvas. Let me know if you are interested and I'll file your contact details and send the full information about costs and enrolment early next year.

Rodney has created another wild and intriguing face for me to embellish which is gazing expectantly at me from the wall of my studio... but today I thought I'd make some journal covers. We are taking our art to another Art Bazaar event, at Civic Park in Newcastle on the first Saturday of December. I wanted to make some less expensive items than our canvases.

I made this lovely slipcover for an A4 size visual art diary

The image on the cover is a digitally manipulated image I made about 2 years ago (I submitted it to USA publication "Pasticcio Quartz" and they published in their mag 2010)

The image was printed on canvas, embellished with some decorative stitching over it with the machine and then mounted it on some canvas I'd stencilled. However, all that took 5 hours and Rodney pointed out to me that for what somebody might be likely to pay for it, I'd be better off  working on embellishing the large canvases. Men are so practical... but I see his point, so I'll ditch the other journals I was planning to work on and tomorrow get down that lady who looks so pointedly at me.....

Byzantium Lady

I'm still struggling to get back into a regular habit of blogging. The five months I had off work while my broken ankle was mending was an extraordinary "break" for me....silly pun intended. Apart from the obvious frustrations of the physical pain and mobility limitations I put the time to very practical use and got a lot of art done!

Then with Spring arriving a few months ago I've been preoccupied with gardening and getting as much new garden established as possible before Summer kicks in.

Rodney and I finally got back to making some new art a week ago. He did this wonderful face and I've been working on embellishing it. Heres a picture of the end of the first day working on it and another from yesterday. It is almost done, I just want to continue the dangling motifs down the left side of the face.

Rodney really loves those red lips.....I wonder what that means? ...something about Baboons bottoms comes to mind....?

Byzantium Lady, nearly finished, just a few more of those dangling motifs down the left side of the face, I think

I was thrilled and amazed that within minutes of Rodney putting this work on his facebook page we had an enquiry to buy. The person will come and look at it this weekend when its finished.