three drawings

These three drawings didn’t get accepted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize. Again. All you can do is go on trying.

Brandon to Bishop Auckland Bridleway framed up

A3 paintings on paper

Brandon to Bishop Auckland bridle path

 

 

I walk a lot locally, there are some very pretty walks. When I had Akira my akita a couple of years ago I tried drawing while I was walking her, a habit I continued after I lost her to cancer.

 

I’ve been doing some colourwork, inks gouache and coloured pencil on A3 paper, and have used the drawings – or the habitual shapes I’ve developed through walking drawing – as the basis for a lot of this work. But it is as much to do with trying to make new habits of using colour as it is about representing a view, probably more so.

 

I recently got another akita from the same rescue kennels as Akira came from and have started trying to draw while I walk him but it is a bit of a different proposition as Akira was 8 and Fuji is only 3!

Fuji

at Nose Point, Seaham

 

 

My Naughty Little Sister

with acknowledgements to the late Dorothy Edwards

This piece was made in reference to the stories by Dorothy Edwards which have stuck with me since childhood. Dorothy Edwards wrote the stories from the point of view of an elder sister describing the adventures of her little sister, but in fact Dorothy Edwards was the little sister herself.

 

They are great stories and wonderfully written. Bad Harry’s birthday party where My Naughty Little Sister (her name is never used in the books) and Bad Harry get to the trifley cake, with all the jelly tots and silver ball sprinkles on top, before all the other party guests do, is one of the most memorable. But I was always affected by the story where she finds a brown paper package containing the lovely fabric that has been bought to make her a bridesmaid’s frock for a wedding, and snips it all up with her scissors and the lovely feeling and noise the scissors make. I can sort of see that fabric in my mind’s eye, the silvery lame stuff that makes the stripe just above the little pair of black shoes is the nearest thing I have ever seen to how I imagine it, and that’s really where the quilt started.

 

When I had finished the quilt I wanted to return to a project I had started years ago and never finished, an oversized kimono made of white Chinese silk brocade and lined in amazing synthetic fabric, orange shot with shocking pink. But at that point I realised that the pieces of white brocade that I had used in the quilt were pieces I had saved to make the collar of the kimono. I was very irritated with myself particularly as when I tried to replace the fabric I found that though there is a similar synthetic fabric I couldn’t find the original stuff anywhere.

 

Anyway it sort of tied in with the story about My Naughty Little Sister and the bridesmaid’s frock which was a bit of consolation, it felt almost like camaraderie!

 

The lame fabric in the quilt came from a second hand shop in the Harrow Road, and lots of the scraps and pieces in the whole quilt are from used or second hand clothes, bags, found items. My Naughty Little Sister knits a scarf for Mr. Cocoa-Jones who lives nextdoor in one story, and I’d like to thank Jane Shaw who made and kindly gave me all the knitted or crocheted panels that are incorporated into this work.