this week i spent part of an afternoon creating some new postcard-sized artworks especially for the rca secret exhibition.rca secret is an annual exhibition of original art on postcards donated by the great and the good, invited international artists, current students, graduates & alumni of the royal college of art.of course, i cannot show you any photographs of the postcards i have made as the artworks' creators must remain a secret during the exhibition and the artist's name is only revealed after purchase.however, i can show you some of my previous contributions to this annual event.
[rca secret 2004, mixed media collage on postcards]
[rca secret 2005, wax encaustic on postcards]
[rca secret 2006, acrylic & ink on postcards]you can see last year's rca secret postcards here, which i completed during a period of cloud watching and drawing, hence no abstraction...all of the postcards in the 2010 rca secret exhibition will also be viewable online in the run up to the grand sale day in mid november although you will have to register to buy.the rca secret exhibition is attended by thousands of people hoping to obtain an original work of art for less than £50 with queues going around the block on the final sale day. monies raised go towards the royal college of art's fine art fund...
winner takes all
in the little art giveaway...thank you to all those that either wrote to me or commented with regard to my recent postcard art giveaway - you can read more about the little art giveaway here...
[three postcard paintings, 2010]now, to be utterly reasonable i obviously ignored the 1929 spiced-ham comments caught in the net since late august (as an aside, it seems that m@n~ß00b$ are the newest product promotion in the tinned meats aisle...)that left me with eleven legitimate names to put forward into the draw... ok, so i wasn't very good at promoting the giveaway but less entrants means a greater chance of winning!furthermore, to be entirely transparent, fair, objective and impartial i used random.org's free online feature to randomise a typed list of words. according to random, its randomness comes from atmospheric noise...
the draw took place at lunchtime today...and the winner is...steven heaton, aka the factory supervisor of the chemical factory!congratulations, these three small artworks are yours for keeps, should you decide to accept your prize...
[three postcards]now, here's a weird thing... not entirely certain how or if the atmospheric noise randomisation would really work i actually clicked randomize three times, quickly screen captured each result, and saw the same name appear in the number one spot three times in succession - there seemed to be no doubt as to the rightful winner! call it atmospheric noise, electrical interference, static, there was definitely something in the ether...
i am delighted that steven, aka the chemical factory's supervisor has won as he is also an artist, someone that i have known (in the virtual internet sense) for about three years now, having exchanged some email correspondence during that time. steven was one of the first people to comment on this very blog and he wrote to me about my own work. i have seen some of his art on his blog and it is very interesting to see that his art is now showing some progression and getting more attention. i used to think we shared similar sensibilties (rust, corrosion, enviromental decay) but his new works in development a more raw, brutal, caustic and quite arrestingly beautiful in a very chemically altered way... one to watch, i think...i think i may do another art giveaway soon... watch this space, or rather a nearby, related space to be exact...also, if you know of any other artists giving away original art do let me know - i never seem to win anything and just missed the deadline for natasha's newton's recent art giveaway...however, in the mini art prize draw at artworks my small painting was won by the curwen press...meanwhile... in the little gallery shop that is JazzGreen, may i introduce some arty christmas stocking fillers...
boomark this page for later...
it is only 82 days until christmas after all....
on painting and printmaking for squares
two free art demonstrations in one week, making light of the work of not so idle hands... firstly, on painting without brushes...
this is a photograph of the artist's demonstration area, taken late in the day; i am rather fond of the paint-splattered bath towels. it was interesting to note that the three in-progress canvases already echoed the character of the barn, but in a more reduced, minimalist manner... painting without brushes' aim was to show that paint can be applied (and removed) by various means to achieve textural depth and intriguing surface qualities...the particular aspect of conveying the visual appearance of the slow passage of time is key to how i paint... layering, accretion, then eroded, scarred, denuded...
and here are some of the paintings (farmscapes) and, unavoidably, some artist's feet also appeared in the frame, my red painting mules or ruby slippers...
...and then there was printmaking for squares, another night on the tiles, demonstrating the intaglio printmaking processes in my recent series of small collagraph prints.i forgot to take my camera but some people were taking photographs of the artists at work (so i may get digital copies soon) and many came to watch, to ask questions and appreciate the work that goes into making art. there were about fifteen artists demonstrating a range of art-making processes, from printmaking to wax batik, papermaking and sculpture over the course of three hours.i took along some collagraph plates, printing paper, etching inks and even my humble, small etching press, with its rickety, edwardian hostess trolley base, but i forgot my hotplate and a desk lamp.it was an event well attended and i hope enjoyed by the many visitors despite the stormy weather brewing outside...here are two collagraph print/canvases i made earlier, taken along as examples of the intaglio collagraph processes i have used, from the ongoing, and globally expanding iCons (or eye cons), virtually travelling 'around the world in one hundred abstracts', with some help from google, wikipedia et al...
mexico (city), intaglio collagraph on canvas, 2010have i mentioned that these are really quite tiny at 5" x 5", but they are very tactile pieces, canvases that ask to be picked up, placed just so, moved around, made a small feature of, rearranged, on their own or re-configured with one or two more for some colourful company.the colours in these works have become darker but also richer, with very touchable surfaces, with a visual aesthetic appeal recalling something similar to old leather or waxed, aged wood, neither paper nor canvas but now something else, modern & new and yet somehow vintage, an antique, a relic...
milano, intaglio collagraph print on box canvas, 2010this led to a discussion regarding the experience of art in galleries (especially sculpture) and the importance or need to experience art through touch, in contrast to the only look/do not touch policy...is this the subtle psychological difference between (as perceived or presented) high art & humble crafts? that is, fine art maintains its higher status by being untouchable for the many, contextually separated, intellectually distanced, suggesting that craft is essentially manual, practical, created by hand for a particular purpose, fashioned from the earth and not a product of the metaphysical mind...of course, those creative, aesthetic boundaries are continually encountered & challenged by the individual artist/maker but the conceptual classification still exists in the art world...so, i am wondering if these iCons are becoming something of a diffusion line in artistic terms - more affordable, ready-to-hang or display, hand-crafted artworks that reflect some of my artistic concerns but are more instantly appealing as objects, decorative, collectible even... but, i think in reality, these are transitional artworks, that will, in time, signify a shift in my initial concepts, my creative thinking, a change in methods and materials, in form and substance...you will see, dear reader, that this is where maintaining an artist journal (as opposed to a regular look at what i made today art blog) is of the greatest benefit to the artist - artists look both backwards and forwards, upways, downways, sideways, both ways - well, you never really know what's around the next corner even if you've been around the block a few times......i have not forgotten the postcard art giveaway - the names have just been verified & collated (all eleven of them - thank you kindly!!), a list drawn up and then randomised to select just one winner - but for blog tidiness it will be announced in a new blog post......