Some New Painting

Moving away from the Childhood Memories theme, I am responding more to my environment and thinking about the history of the place and the effect of the activity of humans on the environment. The area around Aysgarth (the name means clearing in the wood)is quite wooded and has a nature reserve woodland with much thoughtful planting by local landowners. The area above the Upper Falls is quite distinctive with its raised roots on the trees that grow close to the River Ure indicating a change in water level. This is quite seasonal and can also be quite dramatic with the waterlevels rising and falling in response to the amount of water coming down the valley. During the summer I did some drawing of the are above the falls and have started to work them up into paintings.

I like to work in sketchbooks and will use any spare paint to create a background in the sketchbooks so I can develop inmages with a common colour relationship and also to use up any acrylic paint that would otherwise be thrown away or washed into the water system.

I am fascinated by the shapes of the roots, the compositions that they form. I have been working in oils here on board. I sketch out the composition with oil bars and then develop using brushes, two stages of the same painting can be seen here but is as yet unfinished.

This is a larger one that I am working on, I am quite enjoying the mood that these are developing with a surreal quality due to the emotional colour selection and flattened perspective. I am leaving this here as they are still in the early stages and will post again in the New Year. Thanks for reading. Julie

Mono and Lino printing editions

I tought I would follow the 20x20 post with a post about the printing that I am working on and the edition I sent to the 20x20 exhibition at the Hotbed Press in Salford. I have been enjoying experimenting with Gelli prints and although it is difficult to edition something so variable, I chose to make an edition of monoprints of the childrens shoes. The theme of the shoes has been a continuing one since lockdown and the paintings I made about childhood, so the shoes represent the artist as a child. I was focussing on a particular event from my childhood that I remember distinctly of being out on a walk with the family on a summers day. We were walking in the Peak District. As everyone else got up and continued the walk I remained lying down in the long grass enjoying the sunshine and the feeling of just being. I was unaware of the concern I caused as the rest of the family were searching for me. So, this litle memory has become a series of prints.

I started by using the Gelli plate to create a background of grasses. Using Caligo inks, watersoluble.

Then continued to monoprint draw the small shoes on top.Using watersoluble lino block printing in that has been left overnight to almost dry, drawing blind on the reverse of the paper to pick up the line in ink. I like this technique as it gives a line that cannot be achieved any other way and creates a freshness and immediacy to the drawing.

I then diverged from printmaking and used a handpainting technique with an acrylic paint mixed with an extender to create a light almost transparent layer to fill the shoes. These techniques really only worked on finer layout paper as so I was unhappy with the result at first as I tried it on Japanese Kozo paper. The Kozo paper was unable to pick up the monoprinted drawing. I completed the edition on layout paper for the 20 20 exhibition. (One problem being that the paper was not very robust for the way they display the images, just using bulldog clips. Something I have learnt to change for next year) I had already made the backgrounds on Kozo paper so I created another edition on the same theme, this time creating a simple lino cut for the top layer and ommitted the monoprint drawing.

I have made some similar prints using monoprinting techniques on the same theme. This time creating an opaque hand painted layer to infill the white socks. These are slightly different as they depict ater experiences at school when asked to stand up and answer a maths question. The shoes are roughly drawn to represent the awkwardness of the child. Socks unevenly pulled up feet maybe turned in.

Some of these images are available for sale from my space on the website for Yor Mill Craft Shop and Gallery. www.yoremillcraftshopandgallery.co.uk Thanks for reading the blog Julie

20x20 Printmaking Exhibition

This year I teamed up with Green Door Arts Group to enter the 20x20 printmaking open call exhibition which is run by Hotbed Press in Salford.

Each printmaker makes an edition of 20 of their prints and send it with the group collected works to Hotbed Press who then collate and exhibit the works in their premises. They then send each participant 20 prints in return. The returned prints could be from all over the UK and beyond, they could be amateur or proffessional printmakers, total beginners or acomplished printmakers. We then had a small exhibition of our own at Yore Mill Craft Shop and Gallery in the studio space, showing our entries and those we recieved in return.

We were also twinned with another group of the same size, Square Group, and we have also exhibited their work too. I have no contact for their group and so am unable to acknowledge their ownership of their images.Likewise, there are too many artists to list here for the collections. I hope you will forgive me if you recognise your work.

Participating artists from Green Door are: Myself; Julie Edwardson, Kath Lockhart, Robert Finch, Gilli Slater and Frances Winder.

We opened the exhibition on the 2nd and 3rd of December 2023 and it runs until we close for Christmas on the 22nd Dec 2023 Julie Edwardson

Falling and Feeling Fragile

The painting, Falling, is depicting a feeling that I can have if I am feeling anxious. Simply the act of letting go and falling down. It stems from a time in my childhood where I seemed to be the object of my parent's frustration and anger. It is only in hindsight that I can look back and feel that I recognise now where that feeling comes from. So, the image is representing a posy of daffodils, the miniature variety in a vintage Cornish jug. So it suggests a certain time, during the late 60s. I have painted using a limited palette of bonny blues and contrasting yellows to suggest the period and also to suggest the time of year, Spring, when the flowers would emerge. I have shown the jug as it is just in the act of falling and the stems are coming out. The tablecloth is an actual found vintage fabric that has been applied to the surface with glue. This time I decided not to paint over the surface of the fabric but just to leave it natural. I don't know if or how its colouration will change over time. I have made the panel in two square panels to increase the feeling of separation coming apart and falling.

Feeling Fragile on the other hand expresses my feelings of another's breakdown. Both paintings were shown in my Exhibition, Childhood memories at Yore Mill throughout August 2023. The egg cup is also a Cornish ware ceramic that conjures up the late 60s to me when I was growing up. This painting is also using a limited bright palette of pastels to create a vintage feel and again the placement of the objects is asymmetrical to suggest unease. The ceramic doll represented is the type that would be found in the bathrooms of elderly aunts to coyly disguise the toilet roll with a crocheted doily skirt. The doll represents a femininity that I could not relate to as a child. The doll is broken and chipped, the egg cup is overturned and the egg shell is empty and cracked. Mental health, postpartum female health, issues that were swept under the carpet in the 60s and addressed with a tough love, get on with it attitude. There's lots more to discuss, small painting, big issues, scratching the surface.

Yore Mill Summer 22

Yore Mill Bridge Summer 22 These small paintings are straight forward views of the mill in one way. But in another they tell a story of climate change. The summer of 22 was the hottest on records and the hottest temperature was recorded in Britain since records began. We were able to walk down the river from the Upper Falls to the Middle Falls actually on the river bed. We picked up litter and agricultural plastic from the river bed and found a Victorian boot that was revealed by the low water. Also visible was the broken mill wheel that has been languishing in the river since it was cracked probably in the Georgian or Victorian period of the Mill being in its industrial height. So the views of the Mill and Bridge are looking up from a dry river bed and not the usual viewpoint from road or bankside that would usually be seen. I have painted them in acrylic paint on recycled board. I am aware of the implications for plastic pollution with using acrylic paint. I paint multiple images at the same time to minimise wasting. I only put out what will be used in one session and use it all up even if that means painting a background in a sketchbook. Then only the brushes need to be washed and waste is minimised. I am finding a direction in these paintings as I respond to the environment in a visual and emotional way.

Summer 2023 Exhibition

Childhood Memories at Yore Mill Craft Shop and Gallery For August I presented the work I had previously shown at The Bank in North Shields plus some other paintings that I had been developing on the same idea. I was able to clear the studio out and hand the large images that I had previously shown, this time I applied them to wooden stretchers so they would hang against an MDF screen we put up to mask my shelves.

This painting came about due to a memory of the shoes we all wore in the 60's and 70's. My Mum was a shoe fitter for Clarks and StartRite so it was a point of pride that we were all kitted out correctly at the start of the school year. Old family photographs show myself and my sisters all in these, either red or blue. My friend recently had to help an elderly relative clear out a house and a pair of these were found, she gave them to me because she knew I would do something with them. So I had painted them as still life. I like the off centre positioning of the shoes as I was trying to depict a feeling of discomfort and self concsiousness that I felt as a child. The marble just balances the composition out and refers to a particular event when I fought (and won) physically with a boy in the school playground to regain my marbles when I thought he had won unfairly. The shoes kind of represent my self at that stage of my life and are a stand in for a self portrait I suppose. The little shoes painting was just quickly painted in oils on board. I have been enjoying working with oil paint again and find it more satisfying that acrylics. I like that the paint stays open for longer and can be blended for longer.

This painting I titled StartemRite. It depicts a pair of vintage childrens shoes with their original box. Again representing the self as a child. I painted this as a straight still life but from a dark ground so the overall impression is of objects emerging from a dark place. In the background is visible a leather belt which is partially obscured by the shadows. I hope to represent some of the tension that existed in my childhood of the constant threat of physical punishment whilst at the same time keeping up the appearances of a happy and prosperous family life.

This painting, I called Holy Grail, depicts (again using still life observation) a vintage cut glass cookie jar. It belonged to my paternal grandfather who was very dear to us as children. The cookie jar represents himself. We would be allowed to have a chocolate biscuit at Christmas from the cookie jar. I can't look at the actual jar without seeing my sisters hands going into the jar first to retrieve a cookie, the anxiety is still real today! I must admit it was a challenge to paint. I didn't use any tracing methods or projection but it is mostly drawn by just using the brush. I limited the palette and really painted more or less monochromatically just trying to depict shadows and highlights. Eventually the marks I was making with the brush came together in a kind of approximation of the light glinting off the cut glass surface and the chocolatey darkness distorted within. The biscuit that I could get that was the closest were Foxs full chocolate shortbreads. I had good feedback from the public about the exhibition as I also showed alongside the pictures some vintage artefacts such as the shoes, Pelham Puppets, a Spacehopper, a tin robot toy and some vintage magazines. The children were allowed to play with the puppets and toys. We had some interesting discussions about how childrens toys, the gendering of toys i.e what was acceptable to play with being a boy or a girl. With adults the shoes were a good starting point for discussion as most Gen X visitors remembered wearing the sandals in some way when they were young. There was general concensus that they were a good leveller in that we had no choice and in one way, it made us all the same in the playground