November and December 2016

Tweet

Preparing for Winter - preening on the River Exe.

To London.

To the V&A - my first stop on arrival on a very rainy day in London. My train arrives at Paddington so getting to the V&A on such a day means that I need not get wet at all if I am prepared to descend into the underground and then along tunnels to enter my haven.
This is a mishmash of entries as shortly after arriving in London I inadvertently became host to one of this season's viruses. Oh, how I could live without it. I have a collection of photos to edit but have run out of time as now it is the season of Christmas catch up and making sure that galleries are stocked with jewellery.
I am reconnecting to my days, long ago, when I worked with clay - porcelain to be exact. Over the years, I have followed the thread of my imagination using many different mediums and it feels a little like coming home to be handling earthenware and porcelain clays once more. 
I discovered a small pottery group quite by chance last summer when I was putting leaflets out in neighbouring villages for my Open Studio. I was invited to go along and see for myself - well, it reminded me of working in one of those rather lovely old ram-shackled studios - the sort of place you might have been lucky enough to have found a degree course being run in the 1960's in the U.K. Except we were all just that much older but more importantly - we are all on the same plane. The atmosphere was fantastic so I joined. So every Thursday morning I travel down river to Lympstone and re-connect to another me.

Travelling around so much was the main reason why I found myself devising an alternative method to porcelain by using a fine papier-mache paste/clay that I could harden with resin - no kiln required. 

But true porcelain is a different world and now I have access to a small kiln I am making pieces with a view to creating a new collection next Spring. 

September 2016

Tweet

September has been a lovely month down here in Devon and just that much sunnier in the South of France. One of my favourite places is that stretch of coast between Nice and Monaco and the hills behind. Monte Carlo tends to make me very uneasy. However, time spent walking and swimming here can be very simply spent. It can be very peaceful. This time, I went with my daughter, so that made it all perfect.

I am writing a story that has parts of it set down here so I wanted to check up on details. There's already a story waiting to be told in the photos above.

I also had the desire to try to capture some of the key colours that I could use in a new range of jewellery I am working on. This way of working matters, I imagine, more to me than to anyone else. I need to make the colour associations real. Most everyone else, naturally associates their own memories and preferences for these colours and that is as it should be - colour lives in our souls and thank goodness, it is a universal language, with all of its associations.

When I came back home, I set to work in the studio and settled on 16 colours t begin with. And one perfect matt black square box to display them in. The thing that absolutely thrilled me was the fact that they appear to be backlit. They quite literally dance with vibrant colour and vitality. I am so pleased. Can you match the pieces with their inspirational colours?

One thing that I am all too well aware of with static photography is that it is just that - static. My next technical foray will be into a moving, albeit momentarily, image that may go some way to conveying what they really look like.

Incidentally - what may appear to be tiny air bubbles in the resin, are in fact, tiny points of light, thrown up from the minuscule particles that make the iridescent inks iridescent. In reality, they catch the light and appear to move, in the same way that a peacock or a magpie feathers do, or butterfly's wings. Photography catches them in mid-flight.

And of course, colours on a screen will differ from screen to screen somewhat. There is a really noticeable difference between Azure and Marine believe it or not.

Lemony Green

Marine

Terracotta

Lavender

Pine 

Magenta

Turquoise

Chilli Red

Lime

Azure

Cobalt

Aquamarine

Violet

Coral

White

Grey

square black box with velvet insert

September 2016

Tweet

September has been a lovely month down here in Devon and just that much sunnier in the South of France. One of my favourite places is that stretch of coast between Nice and Monaco and the hills behind. Monte Carlo tends to make me very uneasy. However, time spent walking and swimming here can be very simply spent. It can be very peaceful. This time, I went with my daughter, so that made it all perfect.

I am writing a story that has parts of it set down here so I wanted to check up on details. There's already a story waiting to be told in the photos above.

I also had the desire to try to capture some of the key colours that I could use in a new range of jewellery I am working on. This way of working matters, I imagine, more to me than to anyone else. I need to make the colour associations real. Most everyone else, naturally associates their own memories and preferences for these colours and that is as it should be - colour lives in our souls and thank goodness, it is a universal language, with all of its associations.

When I came back home, I set to work in the studio and settled on 16 colours t begin with. And one perfect matt black square box to display them in. The thing that absolutely thrilled me was the fact that they appear to be backlit. They quite literally dance with vibrant colour and vitality. I am so pleased. Can you match the pieces with their inspirational colours?

One thing that I am all too well aware of with static photography is that it is just that - static. My next technical foray will be into a moving, albeit momentarily, image that may go some way to conveying what they really look like.

Incidentally - what may appear to be tiny air bubbles in the resin, are in fact, tiny points of light, thrown up from the minuscule particles that make the iridescent inks iridescent. In reality, they catch the light and appear to move, in the same way that a peacock or a magpie feathers do, or butterfly's wings. Photography catches them in mid-flight.

And of course, colours on a screen will differ from screen to screen somewhat. There is a really noticeable difference between Azure and Marine believe it or not.

Lemony Green

Marine

Terracotta

Lavender

Pine 

Magenta

Turquoise

Chilli Red

Lime

Azure

Cobalt

Aquamarine

Violet

Coral

White

Grey

square black box with velvet insert