Squarescapes at Coldstream Museum

As well as working at Coldstream Gallery and teaching, Rich has managed to produce a fabulous set of his squarescapes ready to exhibit at Coldstream Museum at the end of March, it is going to look brilliant! Do pop in to Coldstream Gallery to see us after!

Day 29 and 30 From the Workroom

Day 29 some jewellery work on the go.  One of the little copper squares on the earrings still has some lettering from its former life as a water pipe, which is rather cool.  Am pleased with the sea foam bubbles ring and just creeping into shot is a pair of sea foam earrings like these.  All will be polished and available at the Vintage Market, The Maltings, Berwick upon Tweed this Saturday 27th August from 10am - 4pm.

Day 30 is a detail of one of R's paintings in progress.  I remember when he set up and photographed this still life and buying the squash back when it was autumnal and, yes, it's changing out there people!  For those of you in the area R will be at the Wool Festival in Coldstream this Saturday with an array of prints and cards of loveliness!  


I have just had to renumber the my photograph numbers as, a quick computer tidy has shown me I am missing three days of photographs.  I am searching through to work out where they have gone and have a feeling I may have borrowed R's camera and said photos may be gone, meh, never mind, plenty more to come!

lauracameron.co.uk

Let me introduce you to lauracameron.co.uk my very own little slice of cyberspace! Now I have a little place to call my own and collect together my jewellery, painting and photography all in one place. Today is the day I decided to make the site public, however, as a fluid site to be regularly updated with new work you will see some sections are fuller than others!

I'm very excited about the site and have a further list of developments for it including a newsletter sign up section which I'm working on and, of course, new jewellery, paintings and photographs!

Hope you like it and, please, if you do spot any whopping errors, do let me know, I can take it!

For now I'm going to enjoy a bit of web free time and have a go with the new drill chuck R's Dad made for me to hold teeny tiny drill bits, clever man!

Painting

June Stems, oil and acrylic on canvas

I am currently wading through the head soup of creating my first website and that is exactly what it looks like at the moment: my first website, circa 1996. It is starting to make more sense and I have finally got to the point where I can put pictures up and this is the first painting going in the gallery. Inspired by the work of, and with kind permission from, Kitsmumma I love the way the summer haze combines with the texture of thick oil paint applied with palette knives. Yesterday I started a new piece and it feels good to be painting again, although I might have to return to water mixable oils as I stank the house out with turps, oops.

Still Waiting

Hello everyone!

Hope you've had a good weekend! We are still waiting to move house now that our buyer's solicitor has been satisfied with the logistical impossibilities of having the moon on a stick she just wants a telescope and wants us to pay for it. We're getting rather annoyed and impatient that, unlike the standard decide-which-telescope-you-want-at-the-start-of-the-house-buying-process-pay-for-it-and-get-things-happening-swiftly, our buyer has decided to wait for three months to sort this telescope, despite already having had two telescopes.

Still no news whether we have lost the house in Scotland, so I'm not crying, yet. The nice bottle of champagne we saved as a welcome gift for the buyer might just come with us if things don't get tied up soon. This does seem to be taking the Michael somewhat.

On Saturday we decided there was a need to get out on the bikes and we mounted a rage filled challenge on a hill on Cannock Chase. I got to the top and had to get off my bike with a strong feeling that I was going to throw up. Clearly my rage was greater than my lung capacity! Anyhoo, two hours pounding round the Chase, with a shameful walk up the last hill made us feel better, eventually, you know, after the nausea faded.

So, we are still surrounded by boxes, still prone to being grumpy/anxious/worried and still hopeful we'll be in our new home by the end of the month.
Work wise I have unpacked three boxes of jewellery stuff and am enjoying working on a few designs for bridesmaid jewellery on request from a friend, deep plum coloured loveliness!

Finally, I came across this painter on Flickr and was much amused by his comment on one of my sea glass pendants which reads as follows:

"Very nice work. I remember when I was about 8 or 9 I found a piece of sea glass and thought I had found a precious stone of great value. Took it to the jewellers (how naive was I?!!) and he told me it was just a piece of glass. Then I had the audacity to argue with him. 'How could it be glass when it was so polished looking?'..anyway, it is nice to see that someone has found potential in it, so well done."

Bless!

Mr Tony Johnson

During our trip north we paid a visit to the Chain Bridge Honey Farm near Berwick upon Tweed to have a look at R's Dad's paintings. R had told me about the paintings his Dad, Tony Johnson, had been working on but I wasn't prepared for the sheer scale of work which he has produced. Several wall spaces in the visitor centre have been painted with local scenes, flowers and, of course, bees!


On the vast back wall of the main centre is a huge, intricately detailed pictorial map tracing the River Tweed along the borders and features over one hundred different scenes. It was this painting which really made my jaw drop, as the visual impact when you walk in the door builds ever greater as you move in to study each individual scene, fabulous work!

the pictorial map - so big I couldn't fit it all in to one photograph

It was wonderful having a guided tour by the artist himself as we were treated to all sorts of fascinating details about the paintings including where Mrs Johnson is hiding in one and even a cameo appearance of R's old car!

detail from pictorial map

details from current work in progress, photographed from below hence slightly odd angles

Northumberland

Our holiday adventures have taken us to Northumberland to stay with R's parents and we are having a splendid time. Lots of wandering along coasts and hills, sketching and photographing, reading and snoozing, eating and chatting and today a visit to see R's Dad's amazing paintings!


We visited Holy Island at the weekend and the skies were spectacular; broad expanses of rolling clouds against a bright blue kept catching my eye and I'm looking forward to playing with those photographs. I've been a bit frustrated with my own painting and drawing over the last few months as several pieces lie unfinished or discarded but I'm determined to work out more time for it and have ideas for paintings with big skies. Sketching has been great fun and enthusing me to paint again, even if my attempt at a rock looked like a potato, I've at least lifted a brush and it felt great. A lot of the not painting time has been spent on my jewellery and I'm pleased to say I've had a few sales through Projeto Gallery so I can't complain!

Florence Friday

How about this for a studio?

The first image of the doorway shows the full width of the space, when we saw this fabulous little studio we discussed at length whether we could live and work there, as being so tiny it might actually be affordable. There is a sink, so what more would you need?! Ha! That might have been the Limoncello talking.

I'll pst some photos of where we actually work soon, when school finishes we're hoping to paint the walls so maybe after that!

Florence

We're just about ready to leave for Florence so I'll see you all soon for tales of lovely park wanders


some Brunelleschi


and stunning views a plenty!

Folksy : Painters

I've spotted a few more painters on Folksy recently and thought I'd bring them to your attention!

First up David Pennington of PeningtonART specialises in pet portraits and, having had a bash at these myself can appreciate just how good these are:

Further paintings and commission information can be found on David's website.

I've really enjoyed seeing the progress updates of Fleshie's latest paintings on her blog. Anna Shirron's striking, large scale paisley patterned paintings are stunning and more of her work can be found on her website.On a personal painting note, I bought a new tiny little sketch book to take to Florence and soon there will be paintings to show you!

New Folksy Shop!

Yesterday I had to give up an 'art' day to do an extra day's supply teaching; bills to pay ya-de-ya-de. The school was one I hadn't worked at before and I had a pretty good day there, very impressed with the organisation - I was given a supply pack on arrival with a map and outline of the school day and all the lessons were planned and ready to deliver! Made origami with a low ability group in a lesson on imperatives (fun!) and met a little girl's cat who was making a visit for the last lesson of the day - I really wanted to go to that lesson instead of teach yr 9!

So today on my only day away from school this working week I went Christmas shopping for all my friends on this side of the Irish sea and opened up a new shop on folksy for my Art work: maintaining my redbubble name the shop is called Red Shed Art


This evening I played around with designing a shop banner and am starting with a black and white square cropped kind of a look, I think I'm still under the influence of those frosty webs at the weekend!


There are postcards on order and I'm going to list some images available to buy as prints and I'm going to finish that ttv painting which is still leaning up against the wall upstairs and I'm going to break open the four new square canvases I got today and then I'll have a mini series of paintings for my new shop!