"Ava" fully framed

Today the work  "Ava wears a Gorgeous Yoke" was finished and mounted in this elaborate backframe. The actual painting on the inner canvas is 40 x 130cm so its one of the largest images I've done. The scale I can work at is limited by the practicality of getting the canvas under the sewing machine arm for embroidery.

The inner edge of the frame is stencilled with pale blue triangles.

Heres a close up picture showing the stitching and embellishment on the lower part of the figure.

I'm going to enter this work for the Muswellbrook Art Prize. It is a major biennial show with a $20,000 first prize. Its also juried so I have to submit the image to the initial selection process first! I put in a work a couple of years ago that was not selected (Rodney got in) but that same work later won first prize in a section of our local art show so I don't think it was too lousy!

Wish me luck!

A thread that runs through

A thread that runs through, day 1

"Ava" is finished and Rodney built the complex frame that I want to mount the work on. When that is complete I'll show the finished item in a future blog.

While he was building the frame I started blocking in a new work on a piece of canvas. The photo above shows what I'd completed after a few hours.

Three days ago I was surfing around internet sites looking at what some other favourite mixed media artists are blogging and doing. I came across a "call for art" from well known USA artist Lesley Riley. She is proposing to publish a book based on pictures that were inspired by quotes. So thinking this was great idea and that I'd like to have a go at contributing I emailed Lesley and got a couple of quotes. She sent me these -

"The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that makes ones life" Georgia O'Keeffe

"Beauty is the sense of life and the awe one has in its presence" Willa Cather

The work that was started today will be based on the first quote by Georgia O'Keeffe (strangely enough even though I've been to Santa Fe in New Mexico, USA, 3 times I've never been to O'Keeffes art museum....??!!)

My concept is to have the central floating figure drawing down threads from above which run through her hands and drape down around her body to start weaving the garment she wears and that the ends of the garment trail off from her feet and drift off the bottom of the canvas.....

a moment to smell the roses and eat the herbs

Coming up from the studio this afternoon I paused for a moment to admire the Madame de Pompadour rose I planted about 6 months ago. It is really flourishing in the present hot dry Summer conditions. It is planted in a large tub placed in the centre of the herb garden. It was photographed with the late afternoon sun low on the horizon behind it. Fanning out behind are Salvias and in the foreground, the herb Dill to the left and Basil on the right. I grew the Basil from seed and we are having a big bunch of it with our dinner salad this evening along with tomatoes from the vege garden.

Ava wears a gorgeous yoke

Not much time to spend in the studio lately so Ava has been progressing slowly. Its probably the biggest canvas I've done and I'm doing a lot of very dense machine embroidery on the surface so it could be another week to get finished yet. I also want to do a rather fancy back frame with some painting on the inset border area so it could likely take the rest of the month.

I've renamed the work "Ava wears a gorgeous yoke" and added some decoration to the neck. The "yoke" is embroidered and appliqued and stitched onto the canvas. The piece hanging in the cleavage is a little bead motif I made a few years ago.

I'm considering entering the work into the Muswellbrook Art Prize if I get it finished in time.

Rodney and I are looking forward to doing a 2-day art workshop starting tomorrow. Our local Arts Council is hosting the very accomplished artist Suzanne Archer to teach a drawing workshop. This will be way, way out of my usual comfort zone as an artist!!!

Su is almost diametrically opposite to me in her mediums and aesthetics. We will be working on paper with black mediums - charcoal and ink.....eeeeek!! no colour! Tonal washes - no opaque paints...it will be still life subject matter such as bones, skulls and other objects and we will be encouraged to work large scale!

I'm already feeling a little daunted.....

New Year, New Work...

I worked on "Valda" for a few days and felt stuck....so I cast her aside (temporarily) and started work on this new figure. It is slightly bigger than real life size, with the canvas measuring  50 x 120cm

Ava, after 3 day

This new picture to be called "Ava"

A lot of layered work on the gown is still in progress. It was a fragment of a cotton hand crotcheted tablecloth which I cut a section out of to fit the figure. Then various parts of the design were painted with different acrylic colours and over that I'm appliqueing, stitching and accenting with dimensional paint. I'm anticipating quite a lot more work to finish the picture, maybe another week....assuming don't get stuck or bored and perhaps she'll get chucked on top of Valda in the "too hard" heap!

Heres a close up picture of the mid section of the image to show the detail

Perhaps the very visually astute of you might notice that the stencil I used on either sides of the face is the same one I cut to stencil the floor a couple of weeks ago!

I am giving away a free calendar featuring some of the art Rodney and I have done in the last couple of years  to the two first people to comment on this blog! Will send free within Australia or anywhere else in the world....(except you Mum, you already have 2...!) Gmail me your address-

HAPPY 2013 EVERYBODY!!!

deck the halls with paint, tra lalalalala laaaah...

Its the last week of school and Rodney is beginning a long break from teaching until February next year. This is also a quiet time at work for me too. I have been doing some art. I got about half way with "Valda" then plunged into starting another larger work which is still in the early stages.

With Rodney off work I've been making lists of tasks that need to be done round the house/garden and spending lots of my time figuring out ways to keep him "occupied". My long suffering beloved patiently goes along with most of this pestering and only occasionally makes excuses for why things can't be achieved on my impossible time scale (mainly because I forget our money tree died....)

The "project of the week" has been to clear out and decorate a verandah that runs down the side of our house and this has progressed well. I wish I'd taken some before shots so you could appreciate the difference. This lovely verandah had become a convenient dumping ground for boxes of miscellaneous stuff and pieces of furniture we couldn't fit in the house. It took a day to clear it out before the floor could be decorated.




































I painted the raw timber floor with cheap pine green fence paint then added some simple hand cut stencil patterns. The picture shows about 2/3rds of the room completed. Today we cleared out the remnants of the junk and now I can access the last part to complete the room . Below is a picture of the remaining raw floor boards to paint.

We have some longer term plans to insulate and line the ceiling with "mini orb" corrugated iron and a fabulous little pot belly stove to install....(about items #87 and #124 on Rodneys list.... he will be looking forward to going back to work for a rest)

Our 2013 calendar

Rodney and I are publishing a calendar for 2013 with images of our art.

Photo Wall Calendars by Vistaprint

Valda

A couple of days ago Rodney and I started a new collaborative work. He did this face about 3 months ago. It was the last one he completed before our exhibition at Muswellbrook in August but I was so burned out by that time it didn't get developed into a canvas. So she has been pinned to a wall for months and looking accusingly at me ever since, begging to get contextualised into some exotic creature. I decided to call her "Valda" about 10 minutes ago and if nobody out there wants to suggest something more interesting....she will probably remain so!

"Valda", day 1

Valda, a few hours later

Above is a long shot a few hours later of the canvas on the easel showing how the image is starting to develop. I've done some stencilling, applique and machine embroidery embellishment around the shoulders by this stage. This long shot shows some of the "chaos" I work in, in my studio.

It will likely be a few weeks until this picture gets finished. I chipped a tooth last night and have an emergency appointment at the dentist on Friday. We are then in Newcastle for this Saturday, the 1st of December, at the "Art Bazaar", Civic Park. It would be wonderful to meet some of my readers! Come join Rodney and I  for coffee and see the art up close and personal....

Pearl Red Moon and Rodney Swansborough will be displaying a new series of artworks at the 2012 Summer Art Bazaar in the Civic Park in Newcastle.

Thousands of people attend this yearly bazaar, where artists from around the region display their creativity. This is a market not to be missed.

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.