Catch Up

The long gaps between posts represent my struggle to produce work that pleases me. In the run up to Christmas 2013 I went back to a bit of turning for the gift market. During my break from turning I had seen some images of turned, carved and milk-painted bowls by Jim Sannerud http://www.jsannerud.com  I was struck by the simple charm and lack of preciousness in his work and suddenly realised how liberating it would be not to have to obsess about minuscule imperfections in tool work and finish.  I had accumulated a number of cans of acrylic "milk" paint for use on my panels so I set to work. I have to say that it had been a long time since I so much enjoyed turning wood. The results are shown below:

"Barcode" series. Only a few so far. I enjoyed making these so may do more at some point.

It's been framed!

Festival of Crafts

I will be showing some of my work - collage panels and some turned wood at the Farnham Maltings,  Saturday October 19th and Sunday October 20th.

www.farnhammaltings.com  for more information

Geometric abstract

I found some A2-ish sized glazed heavyweight paper in my stores and thought this would be a quicker and cheaper option for experimenting with paints and compositions than wood.  I've been looking at and enjoying abstract geometric art so this is one of my early attempts. The grey bands were placed randomly, as were the coloured elements.  I'm not sure what to make of it.  Comments welcome...

Blues

Having acquired some more spray paints, I'm experimenting with more colour in my panels.  The image below is the plywood sprayed with first a dark blue and then, with turned and cut elements in place, a light green-blue.  The elements were then taken off to leave their stencils in dark blue.  The idea is a variation of the "White on White" shown earlier.

 

I'm tempted to allow this to stand alone as a "painting".  I've painted the elements a pale blue-green with flecks of silver and gold paints ready to be permanently attached to this blue background board, but I'm not convinced the colours work together interestingly enough.  More thought to go into this.  Comments welcomed...



 

 

A few more ideas

Strips of reclaimed bevelled pine incised with cross-cut saw and bandsaw, stained black and then oversprayed with copper, silver and gold spray paints.  I like the metallic, industrial feel of this and the visual suggestions of keyboards, barcodes or DNA gels.

view from left

view from front

 

view from right

Dowels.  10mm Dowels spray painted dark grey, masked, sanded and some resprayed with blue or silver spray paint.  Glued via flats on to milk painted plywood.

White on white.  Turned elements and offcuts, sliced with a band saw leaving the sawn texture, painted with "Antique White" milk paint and glued to similarly painted plywood board (A2 size).  I prefer this in portrait orientation but for some reason it will only upload in the landscape orientation.  To me, there are hints of some archaic script, such a cuneiform or hieroglyphics. Interestingly, the background "negative space" seems to come forward in the photographic image; this is not so apparent in reality.  I think this panel will benefit from being mounted in a box frame. Comments welcomed...