Surrey Artists Network 1st Anniversary Exhibition at Otters Pool Studio in Guildford, Surrey.

 

Art Journal Post April 2010 by Jenny Meehan

Oh, how pleasing! My painting, Apple Orchard, has been accepted for the Surrey Artists Network 1st Anniversary Exhibition! After quite an adventure getting it to the gallery ( which involved me and one child on one train to Guildford, and my husband and other child on a different train)  I am particularly pleased.  There is so much wonderful artistic talent in Surrey; it is exciting and interesting to see what other artists are exploring and the vast variety of their work. Do pop along to the Otters Pool Studio in Guildford and take a look at the work on show if you are in the area. I think they may need to rotate the exhibition, as there is more art than space, but what a great problem to have, eh?!  Image is of Apple Orchard.

I’m busy priming boards at the moment and stepping out with a little painting on a slightly bigger scale. Experimenting with colours generally and enjoying the freedom of not working so much with depicting recognisable objects. It’s a necessary phase, and enables me to increase my sensitivity to paint which is important. If I want a picture which looks like whatever, I can always work on a photographic image for a few hours. Though I inwardly stress a little about if I will loose my skill with drawing, (my sketchbook has more text and paint in it than drawing) I feel I have to go in this direction for a while…

The sad thing is, maybe, that this kind of painting I am embarking on may not be thought of as as clever as something which folk (who cannot draw) esteem? A person who cannot draw (I mean, duplicate and copy something exactly, not in the wider sense of drawing) will always be impressed by a painting which looks very close to the reality they see in their everyday life. And how common the mistake is, to see an artist’s work and think that because they have not chosen a strictly representational route, that they do not possess the skill to produce such an image? Yet for me, delighting in the beauty of the paint I see all around me, in the billions of possibilities, (by me,so far unexplored), wanting to discover, experiment, and create new images which don’t have to stick to external reality with superglue, but rather hover, at various distances in the area between the imagination and the natural world…does it seem right to bother about this? It is far more important for me to develop my skill with paint…craftsmanship…practical skill…knowledge, and establish a good foundation in working with the material I have chosen to concentrate on, than to bother about how accessible this might be to other people. Once I have allowed myself the freedom to explore, I can then return if I wish to using what I have learnt in a more familiar dialect. 

 

Donate

Clay Experimentation

My pottery course is coming to a slow and gradual end…I have to stop it soon as my painting is the main focus at present. Working with clay has been a revelation to me though. It’s achieved its mission, which was to bring me back to a greater sensitivity with a physical material…necessary because of several years spent with manipulating images digitally. It is also interesting to me with regard to the type of forms which seem to flow from me…shell-like, fossil-type sculptural objects. The next image shows one in progress.