Make Good Art: with a little help from Gail Myerscough!

As you can see, the lockdown has done very little to stem my flow of mildly disturbing but (mostly) harmless activities. The inspiring Gail Myerscough unwittingly encouraged me to come up with another bit of nonsense.

I saw her offer of downloads - free downloads! - and took advantage. There are all kinds of ways to follow Gail. I suggest you subscribe to her email news list at the very least.

I am still playing around with ideas to augment my ‘colouring’ sheet. Maybe add some colour!

Having grown up with all the major elements of Gail’s design influences as my fresh and immediate visual landscape it is lovely to discover her work. Although much younger than me, she affectionately preserves the lines and colour of an iconic period in her patterns.

If you begin to salivate as you explore her designs you should know what to do. Buy Good Art!

And for the time being the free stuff remains. Here!

Neil Gaiman exhorts us all to ‘Make Good Art’. This is just one of a series of posts in my blog where I advocate that you also buy good art. Creativity deserves to be rewarded and fed.

Signing up for that newsletter or following Gail on Twitter will alert you to offers like this to loosen your purse strings.

Click here and go to shop in the heart of classic 20th century-inspired design

Buy Good Art: Rebecca Vincent

Our trip to Northumberland in early March took place under the approaching cloud of Covid-19 ‘Lockdown’. In the end it became a final fling before staying home, protecting the NHS and saving some time each day to enjoy our new artwork by Rebecca Vincent. Our trip to Alnwick included a detour to her studio in Horsley at the start and finish of that week.

Within days of choosing our piece Rebecca published ‘Variations on a theme’ on her blog. You will see ‘Land Lines’ there.

Our ‘Land Lines’ now.

Don’t just squint at my rather poor quality photograph. Start to explore ways of bringing Rebecca’s work into your own home!

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Rebecca was immediately welcoming - no-one had warned her about me! As we looked at all her prints we exchanged our reactions and listened to her explanations. Unusually, most of the work is already nicely mounted which gives you a chance to bypass the trials of imagining a piece ready for hanging. But then she produced a few of her monotypes which seduced us with their insistent uniqueness. The quality of Rebecca’s Giclée prints is wonderful and you can see the intensive hand-finish to her etchings in the video below. But our monotype is an image which has appeared once and can only reappear in a more artificial reproduction.

As in all the works, shape, form, colour and line are here. Colours are deep and rich. Pattern appears through the intervention of textured materials. As Rebecca concedes, there is serendipity and surprise at her results no matter how much experience she brings to her work. There is plenty of manipulation and interpretation of visual reality. But the references remain familiar - even if sometimes unsettlingly familiar - and never go all the way to a distancing abstraction.

We made our choice and went off to Alnwick, Barter Books, Bamburgh Castle and many other Northumbrian delights. Returning home, our second studio visit saw us collect the work which was now beautifully mounted and framed.

Things have changed dramatically since then and a visit to Rebecca’s studio is not possible for the time being. You have links to her website where the work speaks for itself. You can still order and in more relaxed times you will be able to grab the extra reward of meeting Rebecca in person. She is every bit as delightful as the art she creates.

Enjoy this video which shows Rebecca quietly making light of her great talent and application as she produces her lovely work.

Neil Gaiman exhorts us all to ‘Make Good Art’. This is just one of a series of posts in my blog where I advocate that you also buy good art. Creativity deserves to be rewarded and fed.

BUY GOOD ART

Buy Good Art: Ken Hurd

Our first visit to ‘Art In The Pen’ at Skipton in August 2019 inspired us to willingly hand over money for works which pleased us. Seeing creations at first hand and meeting the artists certainly beats viewing websites and reproductions.

Quality prints would have been fine for us but Ken Hurd offered many original works as well to give us a small, nagging headache before choosing one. This we did, returning to ‘Pen 35’ towards the end of the day and finding that we both really liked the same work. Phew.

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You’ll find similar themes from Ken’s travels and observations along the Welsh coast on his website here. Our choice was already cropped by a board mount.

Below is the full spread of the original.

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There seem to be more hints of neglect and dereliction here than in some other works but many of them still suggest the same isolation. Despite all that, there is Ken’s usual uplift of colour and a brightness escaping from gathering darkness. The ‘still-life’ of foreground rocks have even more luminosity than the moon which lights them. Yes, I’m staying poetic - I know that science says the sun is really doing that work! Artificial light from the building offers the reassurance of home and welcome. A haven from a slightly ‘untidy’ outside world perhaps.

Ken’s technique gives him the facility to produce a constant stream of works - almost up to Picasso’s endless variations on multiple themes. But we found honest interpretation of a scene and the mood it inspires in each of Ken’s examples. Ours was not a painful choice. I think we would have been pretty happy with almost any of the ones we have left for you to look at and consider for your own hanging space!

While the current pandemic prevails you can regularly update your chance to enjoy a face to face meeting with Ken in better times here.

‘Art In The Pen’ will let you know of their forthcoming plans here.

Neil Gaiman exhorts us all to ‘Make Good Art’. This is just one of a series of posts in my blog where I advocate that you also buy good art. Creativity deserves to be rewarded and fed.

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Instagram link…

BUY GOOD ART

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Buy Good Art: Kate Lycett

There will be more than one of these posts. The artists will appear in no particular order of merit. They and their works are special to Mrs Cheoff and me but for all sorts of different reasons. Too different to compare and rank things in any meaningful order.

If you aren’t already familiar with Neil Gaiman’s keynote address for the May 17, 2012 commencement ceremony at The University of the Arts, I have embedded it at the bottom of this page. His exhortation to “Make Good Art” (even if the cat explodes!) is the great message which started me writing here.

Do like Neil and make good art of your own. But then look at others who are so damn fine at making good art. They might just be doing it for even more than the joy of making good art and be trying to support their finances by selling their creativity at the same time.
So.
Also.
Buy Good Art.

At present - Covid-19 is upon us - those artists need our support. Their galleries and studios are closed to us and they will be relying on you finding ways to purchase from a distance.

In recent years we have been lucky enough to afford a few works which attracted us. I was going to call them indulgences but that would be undermining the very real and sustaining pleasure which each work and their artist continue to give us.

Right (in no particular order!)
Number one: Kate Lycett

Last year we finally visited Kate Lycett’s studio and the gallery which displays her work in Hebden Bridge. We had discovered her through the mixed media of her web and Facebook pages and alerts to exhibitions. We determined to see things at closer quarters and check our strong suspicion that we would like a piece by her in our home.

Mrs Cheoff was already very taken by this one. I remained to be convinced. I crumbled willingly as soon as we saw it framed, hung and lit.

That is my photograph of the picture now in place on a wall at home. The camera does lie. My photograph looks nowhere close to what I see with my eyes!

“Painted in 2018 for ‘Craggs & Fells’ - a solo exhibition at Heart Gallery, Hebden Bridge. This is part of my favourite running route, and is a regular Friday morning outing with the running girls. The house is Stones Hey Gate, from Widdop Road, heading towards Slack. I don’t ever put people in the paintings, but the two hares (which I have seen in the fields up there) are two of my lovely friends. The white hare is Gloria, the purple one is Gill.”

That was the artist’s inspiration behind ‘Friday Morning’. It is a personal experience, elements of which Kate has decided to share with us. This is a real place made magical through Kate’s ability to communicate it through her art.

The more ordinary reality can be explored with Google Maps:

Click - and run along with Kate!

We have now had the privilege of meeting Kate on more than one occasion. She is chock-full of intelligence, integrity and industry and with ‘Friday Morning’ we have taken some of that into our home. You can ‘meet’ her for a couple of minutes as she talks about some of her work here.

There is technique on display in all of Kate’s work but it takes a very quiet second place to the insistent visual delights on offer. We can now explore part of her enchanted and enchanting artistry. There is a darkness soon to be conquered by morning sunlight. Frozen crystals of human breath settle on the landscape. If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of feet as they crunch on frosted ground. The birds certainly hear it and they scatter with enough calm to form their own pattern on the scene. Hares play their part lightly - and unaware of the folkloric magic which humans bestow upon them. A cold, broad vista offers comforting arcs of shelter… Ahem. I’m doing that thing where the viewer takes over when the artist has decided to stop. But I believe artistic creation is sustained through the ways it is owned and reacted to.

The artist is sustained by the drive to make good art. But we can help that process continue if we buy their good art. In these restricted times Kate and thousands of other artists have set up the means to explore their work and purchase it from well over two metres distant. Doing that in ‘peace-time’ has already given us huge pleasure. I recommend you give it a try.

From Kate’s website:

Here is Kate Lycett’s portfolio to inspire you.

I’ll leave you with some of the details from the work we chose. Details which draw you in while deliciously distracting you at the same time.

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Oh. And, of course, here’s that promised speech from Neil Gaiman (himself)

Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 One of the best commencement speeches. A must watch for any artist and everyone who hopes to b...

Neil Gaiman exhorts us all to ‘Make Good Art’. This is just one of a series of posts in my blog where I advocate that you also buy good art. Creativity deserves to be rewarded and fed.

Make good art…

Buy good art