Here are Some of the Comments from Padiham Painting at Leisure Exhibition!

'A great exhibition; wonderful paintings. Great talents. This group should exhibit more often. A pleasure to visit'

'Excellent display of some very good quality paintings'

'Love the clown picture. Fantastic'

'If this was a competition it would be hard to judge. Well done one and all'

'Today I decided to come to the fair. I have come to the exhibition aswell and it is the best one so far! Well done, good luck in the future - 5 stars'

'I come to the ACE Centre regularly to view the art exhibitions, yours is the best by far! Congratulations on your fantastic work'

'I loved the art it was really touching'

'Amazing, but could do with some more paintings (some are scary)'

'Very good. A lot better than abstracts'

'I enjoyed the paintings, lovely'

Why not pay a visit yourself, and make up your mind? You never know, you might find something to take home...

Padiham Painting at Leisure Group Exhibition

Padiham Painting at Leisure Group Exhibition

 

Today I talked to Clare Smith of Padiham Painting at Leisure group, who are the current exhibitors at the ACE Centre about her work, the group themselves and the exhibition that is on.

Clare originally got into art when she was younger, as her granddad who was a member himself of Padiham Painting at Leisure group for 20 years, would take her with him and hang the group’s work in the summer holidays, when she was about 6 years old. She did art all through school, and college, and was always interested in art and creativity, but only really took it up as an independent hobby when she left university six years ago.

Clare works in oil paint for her pieces, as it’s is quite flexible if you make mistakes, and she likes the actual technique when using it. She used to work solely from pictures in magazines and calendars for example, but says now takes a lot more photos and does preliminary sketches. Clare also said she creates a lot of the pieces after she has visited the place and taken in the atmosphere, and that she thinks it’s easier and better to create pieces from places you know. She loves the local countryside such as Pendle Hill and also the Lake District, which is where she got the inspiration for the piece below (Thirlmere), after she had been on walk there. Clare is particularly interested in light and tonal aspects of painting as well as colour. This is particularly prominent in the ‘Thrilmere’ piece, where Clare has paid particular attention to capturing the light hitting the water subtily, but effectively.

The group who are exhibiting, are the Padiham Painting at Leisure group. They have been running for over 20 years and are a very varied group of artists. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never done any artwork before in your life, or if you are an experienced artist, the group brings together people who want to have a go and enjoy art! There are no regimented rules, or scary exams, it’s all about giving it a go and having some fun, while creating some nice artwork in the process. 

Their tutor is Iris Owen and the group run six different classes a week, so everyone can find one they are available for. The group vary in many ways. The age ranges from 6 years old-93 years old, so everyone is welcome to join. Some artists paint in oil, some in acrylic, or watercolour, and some even do mixed media, and fabric pieces. It’s all about experimenting and giving it a go, to find how you work best and can develop as an artist. There are also many different subjects. While some are inspired by detailed landscapes, others prefer still life, or buildings.

Although diverse in many ways, the group all share a common interest of creating artwork and having fun.

If you are interested and would like to come along and join in one of Padiham Painting at Leisure classes then they would be glad to have you.

After all, as Pablo Picasso once said,
"Action is the foundational key to all success." 

The classes run:

Tuesdays

10.30am – 12.30pm

1.45pm – 3.45pm

7.00pm – 9.00pm

Thursdays

7.00pm – 9.00pm

Fridays

1.45pm – 3.45pm

7.00pm – 9.00pm

Bye for Now
Rosie

Skin Preview Evening

Here are the pictures from the preview evening....

I even dared put myself on a pic!

And can I just finish with a new record, our very first QR tag for the gallery! We are cutting edge here folks! (We isn't really right as it's Helen's QR tag and takes you to her website, which is here)

Ta Ra

Kirsty 

An interview with new exhibitor Helen Oxley

Helen describes herself as a process painter, which means that her work is all about the process itself. She drips canvas, pours paint and pushes canvas and paint through the frames. She does make the frames herself, and sometimes her dad helps.

Her dad helps hang too – here he is in action!

She mostly uses gloss paint in her work for its fluidity (because it’s drippy to you and me!) and it is rather toxic and fume-y. Helen has been sniffing this for a good few months now! In all seriousness though, Helen does open the doors and window in her studio and limits herself to 4 hours at time. She is thinking about making the move to using Acrylic Gloss but there is a more limited colour range, her usual range is Dulux Trade who have about a ‘zillion’ colours according to Helen.

So what does she wear? Old jeans with a spattering of paint, old tops with a spattering of paint and old shoes with (you guessed it) a spattering of paint! She isn’t able to keep a headscarf on as she moves around a lot so she also tends to get a lot of paint spatters in her hair too. Helen tends to work from back to front and top to bottom so she gets dripped on a lot.

Her studio has inspirational images on the wall, dried paint on there too – not dabs of it but she collects the round bits that dry out from the bottom of old gloss paint tins, and notes and quotes. She either has music on or the radio and listens to a wide range of artists depending on her mood. Furniture wise there is a table, 2 chairs and some shelves which are mostly full of tins of paint. She thinks in excess of 100 tins of paint. Helen uses the tins to prop paintings up while she is working on them or while they are drying and to hold the door open. I asked, and the number of paint tin related injuries or accidents this year was only 2 both involving floors; one studio and one car boot. (Joint car boot too).

I wondered if she had a little ritual before she started work, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, has coffee and a bit of thinking time and then sometimes starts with doing some work on her sketchbook. Swap sketchbook for To Do List and that could be my office morning routine.

So Helen explained a little bit more about Process Painting;  

Process painting began in the 1960’s with Richard Serra (have a nosy at his MoMA exhibition here from 2007 http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/14) , and Helens main inspirations include Rothko, particularly his colour fields, Barnett Newman who is very painterly (both can be found here http://www.theartstory.org/movement-color-field-painting.htm )  and Lucio Fontana who was the one who started slashing canvasses although his work is more conceptual than Helens. (See Lucio’s work here http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/artists/record.html?record=4 which includes a picture of him in action slashing!)

Helen is also impressed by Karla Black who was a runner up for The Turner Prize last year (you can watch a video of her and her work here, although I will give this video an art speak warning http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2011/nov/15/turner-prize-2011-karla-black-video). Speaking of the Turner Prize, £25,000 to the winner – that’s why it’s important folks, here is a link to this years nominees, http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/turner-prize-2012-shortlist-announced  ,who do you think will get it? Me, I reckon Spartacus, mostly because it’s a great name!

When Helen creates work, she tries to always make something new and she describes this as “questioning what painting is really”.

Blue Tryptch

When Helen was making this piece she was thinking about the exhibition here at The ACE, she tends to like working on a large scale but made this into a triptych for practical reasons really – i.e. moving the work and installing it. She had some photographs of Monet’s water lilies – the really large panoramics – have a look here… http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80220 . Helen was thinking of scale and grandness but was also thinking about the building and the space her work was going to be shown in, and it is a “colour that is pleasing to me”.

At this point our interview was interrupted by Helen’s dad wanting a staple gun. Luckily Helen had one in her bag, and some staples. I was impressed. Like father, like daughter we decided.

Eighty-Six, 2012, mixed media on canvas, £850

Monochrome is a challenge for Helen as she loves colour, even pronouncing it, “I luurve colour”, but she was thinking of our purple wall in the gallery and it was a deliberate choice to do this and come out of her comfort zone.

This exhibition is called Skin for a few reasons; the paint Helen uses skins over, there is an element of the work being about the body and Helen particularly likes the way the paints skins over and dries on one layer but leaves wet layers underneath.

Then I asked about titles of work as it does give us a little insight into our Exhibiting Artists mind. These are mostly ambiguous, not descriptive titles, I asked if Helen liked ambiguity and she replied quickly “Yes, Yes I do” and went on to explain that her work was fundamentally abstract and she was not trying to make people feel something or wonder something but she liked people to think ‘How did she do that?’.

One is called Subcutis, which is the third layer of skin and this was simply because Helen liked the word.

Subcutis, 2012, gloss paint on canvas, £1150

Another is The Newman Painting No 1. which is a nod to two artists; Bryce Marsden who titled a work The Dylan Painting (have a look here, http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/25612, it’s mostly grey) and it was a title Helen liked and also the work reminded her of Newman’s work so it’s a nod to both artists.

The Newman Painting No1, Diptych, 2012, gloss paint on canvas, £2100

Helen’s work is physically draining, it’s a tiring process and she feels physically and mentally drained afterwards. As I usually like to compare things I mentioned I spent 4 hours digging up dandelions on Sunday morning and asked Helen if she thought her 4 hours in the studio would be as, less or more tiring than this Herculean feat of mine! She reckoned on a par! And she does this regularly, humpf, some steam gone out of me…

She did say she felt like she had achieved something after working, so it was a good tired. I know how that feels, as I sat back with a coffee and admired my clean, dandelion free, soil, while deliberately not looking at the other patches of garden filled with approximately a ‘zillion’ more dandelions.  

I asked Helen how she knew when she had finished a piece and she said, “now that’s the million dollar question” at which point I puffed my chest out again – get me asking such a good question… to which the answer was – deciding when to stop is really hard. Sometimes she puts things to one side and comes back to them later to decide whether to add anything more.

She said the process can be mentally draining and exciting too, sometimes she will start a work and love it, then an hour later she may hate it and think it isn’t working at which point sometimes she will walk away and leave it and sometimes she will hunker down and work though it. The next day she may love it and sometimes she will abandon a work.

This inspired me – I think we should have an Abandoned Works exhibition. Helen liked the idea, as one mans rubbish is another’s treasure after all. Watch this space.

So here are more pictures of Skin, Helen’s first ever solo show, and if you are free between 6.30 and 8pm on Thursday 10^th May join Helen at The ACE for a glass of wine and a look around, oh and I’ll be there too. We’d love to see you.

Tremorlands, 2012, mixed media on canvas, £850

Seethe, 2012, mixed media on canvas, £850

Untitled No1, 2012, gloss paint on canvas, £1150

Murmur, Triptych, 2012, gloss paint on canvas, £2850

Between Red and Yellow, 2012, gloss paint on canvas, £1150



New Exhibitor; Sharon Chadwick

There's a new exhibtion at the ACE Centre, by an artist Sharon Chadwick. Filled with many different styles of work there is something for everyone! I got chance to talk to Sharon and ask her a few questions about herself and work, so here is some extra information on the exhibition and the artist herself.

From Sharon’s very early childhood she has always loved drawing, painting and making things. Since winning an award for painting in her school days she began to think she wanted a career in the arts. But it wasn’t always a certainty, Sharon explained that her parents sent her to secretarial school instead, for a more practical and dependable job. But after realizing that this was definitely not what she wanted to do, Sharon followed her heart and retrained to become an art tutor. Since then has had a successful career in art. With exhibitions in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cornwall, and a variety or commissions of work including landscape, still life, portraits, and modern contemporary work. Sharon is a very firm believer in doing what you are interested in, what’s best for you, and ultimately doing what makes you happy. It’s a refreshing take on career advice for me, and one I definitely support!

Sharon enjoys music. In the past she was part of a folk group and was a semi professional musician, she enjoys playing guitar, and songwriting, and also writing poetry. She feels that her other creative hobbies contribute to her artwork, and vice-versa.

Notes from a Guitar (acrylic)
£420

What’s really interesting about Sharon’s work, is the sheer variation in styles and content. Being a teacher of art she has to understand all the styles anyway, and this is to her advantage. Whereas most artists find a style that fits, Sharon constantly adapts and moulds her style to suit the subject. Her exhibition is so interesting because of the variety of different mediums she uses. From mosaic style tiles, pastel pieces, to mixed media pieces including real stones and bark, to painted fantasy pieces, there is something for everyone to enjoy.



Growing Plants (stone and mosaic design)
£180

Through the Arches (Mosiac design)
£230

Rocky Cost (mosaic design)
£250

Splashing in the Sea at Sennen
£470

Branching Out (mixed media)
£710

Polperro Village (Mixed media)
£440

Mermaids Dance (acrylic)
sold

Red Sunset (acrylic)
£330

Sharon explained that different subjects for her require different expressive techniques. For example, in her watercolour pieces in the exhibition she explained she felt the atmosphere of them was as important as the actual content. So the colours and almost vagueness represents the feeling she got while creating them. Sharon compared it to like a fantasy land of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fantasy world.

Bombadil's World (watercolour)
£300



Rainbow River (watercolour)
£300



Drifting through Time (watercolour)
£320

Sharon really recommends creating work outside, as then you take in the full atmosphere and can get the feeling of what you are going to portray, so you can represent it fully. It definitely shows in her atmospheric portrayal of her subjects. Sharon also said how she loves drawing and painting trees, for the variety in texture and colour, ‘I could draw trees forever’.

Roots (watercolour)
£170

Wild Wood (mixed media)
£750

Langdales (pastel)
£410

When asked about how she creates work, she explained she never simply copies from a photo. It’s more a mixture of sketches, a few different photos, and life itself. And Sharon always plays and experiments with different techniques, to get an authentic and truly original piece. Art is about putting how you feel down, and not simply recording what’s in front of you.

When asked what inspires her work, Sharon explained ‘all aspects of life and nature.’ Her influences ‘stem from the great masters such as the impressionists, Monet, Pissarro, and expressionist painters August Macke and Franz Marc for their vibrant use of colour and interpretations of two dimensional form.’

Sharon also said how she is pleased now to be able to be creative without boundaries. In the past she did many pet portraits, and more traditional pieces that she enjoyed, but didn’t feel truly fulfilled her artistic curiousity. ‘I love to experiment with colour and textures in different media, pushing ideas around to widen my horizons in finding new and exciting ways of painting and creating artwork.’

Bye for now 
Rosie