Keepers Preloved

Keepers Preloved is our new shop! Or rather my partners shop. Selling repainted/refurbished furniture, running a variety of art and craft workshops with adults and children, and selling the work of a few select local artisans. A gorgeous shop, full of wonderful items.

There is a Facebook page and a website, both of which are regularly updated. Do have a look. And yes, I am one of select artists exhibiting there!

The photograph above is an old one, from three weeks ago! Much of this stuff has been sold and there are lots of new items. It is constantly changing.

Art on display

It’s been quite a while since I last posted on my blog. But I have been busy with my art work. I have had a couple of low key exhibitions. Currently I have work on display at our new shop, Keepers Preloved, at Farrington Gurney in Somerset. Here are a few images of my work, and I will post more later. Though they are all framed, some are only temporary. It’s good to get work on display, and I have had some very positive comments.

Bristol Arts and Crafts

This Saturday Lesley and I (child-free for once) wandered around Bristol visiting several craft fairs, art markets and galleries looking at some fine arts and crafts by local makers. “Magpies and I” was our first stop, at the Christmas Spiegeltent on the waterfront, with many artists and craftspeople showing their wares. Following this we wandered along the harbour side and looked at the stalls there. This led us to Colston Hall, and the “Made in Bristol” Fair, where several dozen more creative makers were displaying the fruits of their labours. Still eager for more, we wandered onto the art and craft shops above Christmas Steps, on Perry Street and Colston Street. After a lovely lunch at the Workhouse Cafe (displaying art works on their walls), we reached Antlers Nomadic Gallery latest pop-up exhibition in a Victorian Cloakroom (public toilet), a very unusual gallery space!

Below are montages of some of the many business cards we picked up. We know there are lots of people making art and artefacts out there, but the volume of individual makers did amaze us!

More leaf drawings

The latest additions to my collection of leaf drawings. Rowan, and Chestnut this time. A bit trickier as they are of course constructed from multiple leaves, so smaller and more detailed. Still more to come…

Artefacts for Abundant Living

At the Bath Artisan Fair today I saw the work of Asa Bostrom, who was showing wonderfully textural pieces of assemblage, with an arcane and esoteric feel to them. There were a few 3D pieces, objects adapted and added to, creating evocative and attractive antique artefacts. Then there were paper-based works, folders collaged and covered in collected papers and images, beneath layers of wax. Whilst wonderful in their own right, they also suggested possible avenues for my own work.

Asa is a Swedish artist, who has come to Bath recently, and has a multitude of skills and talents; writer, designer, yoga and writing teacher, as well her mixed-media art work. Her website has some wonderful imagery and art works, and links to her blog www.asabostrom.se

Matthew Lanyon

Our major purchase whilst in St Ives was a limited edition, hand-finished print by Matthew Lanyon, son of Peter Lanyon. His work is in the tradition of his father, a textural and semi-abstract response to the observed landscape. Unlike his father’s work, there do appear to be more representational motifs in his work, suggesting some vague, undisclosed narrative, or a specific viewpoint or feature within the landscape, or else some historic or ancient presence. Formally he creates strong compositions of bold patches of colour. A keen hang-glider like his father, his paintings mix aerial and earthbound viewpoints and perspectives.

We would have loved a larger work, perhaps a painting, but lack the space to display and appreciate it properly (Ok, we lack the money as well). He lives locally, towards Penzance, and is building a reputation for himself. We purchased the print from Porthminster Gallery who were very helpful, informative and friendly. Here are also a couple of his paintings in the gallery, both quite large in scale.

Bo Lee. Nocturne

Nocturne is the title of the current exhibition at the Bo Lee gallery in Bath. It is showing the work of two of its artists, Rose Sanderson and Patrick Haines. These artists have overlapping concerns and influences. Both draw inspiration from the animal kingdom and Natural History, both often make use of ready made objects, and both have a dark and sinister side to their work. Patrick Haines’ sculptures are the most overtly strange and unsettling, while Rose Sanderson’s deal more with fragility and mortality.

In this show Patrick Haines is exhibiting work that is larger in scale (includes more objects and items) and has more narrative (suggests a more detailed story) than I have previously seen.

Rose Sanderson has also moved from small intimate paintings of birds and butterflies on single book covers, to larger scale paintings which spread across several covers.

Patrick Haines creates delicate and detailed sculptures of birds and other feathered animals, and juxtaposes these with various everyday objects. Often he uses books, his sculptures eating into the fabric of the object. Other times he uses light fittings, rulers, and, in his largest piece here, furniture and fixtures from a Botanists study, which is alive with sinister beasts, and sinister animal parts.

Art in Bath

After my post on Art and craft at Just make, in Wells yesterday, here are a few photographs of pieces in Rostra and Rooksmoor Galleries in Bath today. Most of the work is by artists we are familiar with, but there are occasional surprises.

These ceramic figurines are by Jo Lucksted.

These, and other, paintings hung over most of the walls are by Christina Holvey. They have a lovely textural and painterly quality, and a detailed and decorative homely imagery. They have a simplicity and engaging freshness. 

These small paintings by Nicola Cooke of the beach and coast made us long for the Cornish Coast. We hope we might make it there before the end of the summer! They have the simplicity and lightness of sketches done on the spot, and not unlike something I might do.

Local galleries

My significant other (half) is helping out in a gallery in Wells, Somerset, at the moment. There are some very attractive and lovely hand-made things for sale. There are prints, small sculptures in clay and wood, cards, and jewellery in both ceramics and fabric, as well as other textile work. Here are a few examples of the gorgeous tactile and decorative things for sale. The gallery is called Just make.

Sculpture 1

There has been a fashion for decorating and displaying large animal sculptures around city centres in the last couple of years. Around Wells town centre in Somerset there is a display of decorated swans at the moment. For want of anything better to post about at this particular moment(which is a lie actually! The problem is most of my posts take me too long to compose!) I thought I would show you some of the swans that I saw today. The Swan’s of Wells.

This swan is decorated by Candace Bahouth, a well-known artist around Bath, who creates bejewelled objects, most notably shoes! It is quite beautifully decorated with a wide variety of shells, very carefully composed and constructed, and entitled Queen of Shells.

This amusing swan was sponsored by, and sited outside, a solicitors and entitled Up Before the Beak by James Mark Long.

This swan is covered in maps, entitled Cyril and decorated by Lisa Wooding, and sited within the Bishop’s Palace.

This lavishly decorated swan is entitled Odile-the Black Swan by Kate Rattray.