Research, paintings, new studies and musings

After finishing "tidal traces" in June I've mostly been busy with visitors at the gallery so haven't had much creative time over Summer. However in July I managed to spend a couple of weeks gathering new research, developing some existing ideas and creating a couple of new summery paintings.

Most of my days out researching were spent close to home, pottering around South Ronaldsay admiring the patchwork fields, expansive skies and hazy horizon due East.

 

I also spent a lovely, sunny afternoon up at Marwick (on the west mainland of Orkney) at the end of August, soaking in the sunshine, sparkling seas, open skies and expansive horizon due West. As I'm stuck indoors during the day for most of the Summer months I really cherish the days I manage to get out to sketch and think in the sunshine.

After my week exploring I spent some time back in my studio working through ideas and created a couple of new drawings and paintings. For a bit of fun I photographed this pair outside the gallery on a bonny morning. All different locations within Orkney but they share expansive, blue skies.

For the past couple of weeks I have been working on smaller woven studies for a "bigger idea" which has been floating around my head for a few months, hoping they'll provide some answers I need to bring the idea to life.

I posted the above photograph and accompanying text on our Gallery Facebook page a couple of weeks ago and received the comment "Like an artist making a sketch before their final work," to which I replied that it's exactly the same process, just a different medium.

I know the comment was said with absolutely zero offense intended (as I receive similar comments regularly) but I find it interesting that when I decide to communicate my ideas through tapestry rather than painting that it's somehow no longer considered artwork or I'm no longer an artist when I use both mediums with the same purpose.

I always say it's not the medium which dictates whether something is art or design (or neither!) it's how the medium is being used. In my case (and my late mother's) I use handwoven tapestry as a fine art medium to create one-off works of art; I do not use it to create pre-planned, repeatable designs. I think of my tapestry work as painting with threads instead of oil paints.

Art tangent aside, I have now finished my studies and feel they have provided the clarity I needed to approach the final artwork. Hurray, all systems go!