Exhibition at Yore Mill Craft Shop and Gallery. Colours of the Dale. May 27th to July 27th 2024 The exhibition marks 3 years of having the gallery and all the developments that we have done with it. I also feel that my own work has developed in a personal way. I am responding more to the environment around me and setting myself challenges of drawing and recording what I see and feel about living at Aysgarth Falls. The environment here is particular to this area and creates a micro climate. Being in a dale it is different how light is experienced as it pierces the trees and undergrowth creating diffused atmospheric light. It is this special light that I have tried to capture in the paintings and the feeling of being under the trees in the evening light.

Golden Hour, Freeholders Wood

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

Run From The Shadows

 

An Exhibition in the studio at Yore Mill Craft Shop and Gallery 

August 22 through till October

@yoremillcraftshopandgallery.co.uk

Run From the Shadows 

Since moving to the Dales in 2021 my work has taken a slightly different direction. Living in a more rural environment has inevitably led to a different source of inspiration. My work has been less urban, obviously but I am still drawn to the man-made elements in the landscape and their interplay with nature.

Night Falls, Acrylic paint on board, 55x80 cm

 I have been intrigued by the play of light through the trees particularly falling onto man made forms and am enjoying responding to the sights and sounds of the environment aiming to express the mood of the local area in gesture and colour.

Run From The Shadows, Acrylic on board, 55x80cm

I cannot avoid being immersed in the natural environment here, living in a fairly remote area. But, the commanding building we are living in also is a constant reminder of the industrial history of The Dales.

In these recent works I hope to evoke the sights and sounds of the dales through these abstracted images such as the play of water over stones and the breeze through the trees. I am attracted to the points where nature and humans collide, textures and contrasts.

In These Golden Years, Acrylic on board, 55x80cm

These latest paintings are inspired by walking and jogging through The Freeholders Wood and surrounding area of Aysgarth, Yorkshire.

Blue Moon Light, Acrylic on Board, 54x54cm

I have used mixed media collage and acrylic paint to achieve a textured layered images through transparent and opaque media achieving depth and subtlety in tone and colour.

Last Look Back, Acrylic on board, 55x80cm

 Last Look Back

Under the trees the evening sun

Falls against the painted green

Have the last look back

It’s time to go

Nights are Warm, Days are Young, Acrylic on Board A3 image size

Run From the Shadows

Where shattered light

fractures the stone

water and wood

Run from the shadows

Wish Upon Day Upon Day, Acrylic on Board, A3 image size

Light Applause

Light applause

From branches overhead

As the gale subsides

And the golden beams

Like torchlight fall

Never Look Back, Acrylic on Board, 54x54 cm

Blind Barn

Blind barn mouth agape

Golden green dale cup the light

Tunnel trees aglow

Some of These Days, Acrylic on Board, A3 image size

The Wind Takes a Ride

The wind takes a ride on the coursing river

Lifting water into its current against my face

My right cheek is cold from the water

And my left is warmed by the sun

Fences

I started these paintings in February 2021

On my jogging route I pass a fence that has been patched up many times there is wire and barbed wire on it and this particular time the sun was low in the morning sky and hit the fence revealing much of its imperfections and textures.

I took some photos of the fence and it sparked off a series of paintings.

Very different to the last series of paintings I had been working on, this series just became about the appearance of the fence, the colours, textures and layers.

I began by preparing some MDF board by cutting into squares and coating with white gesso.

Then, I took the photographs of the fences and set them around, I didn't want to specifically to copy them straight off so I analysed the colours using a limited palette of Cadmium yellow, Alizarin crimson Ultramarine with some Paynes grey.

I used a old map to create a collaged texture on the boards first, then working on the floor I made marks using a broad brush and just keeping in mind the layers of wooden fence posts.

Taking colours in turn, I worked on the boards together at one time. I used extender medium to create transparancies and glazes, then letting the layers dry before applying the next one. I enjoyed working into the glazes while still wet using a brush handle to make marks.

Eventually, I took each board in turn and responded to the marks to develop each one into an individual abstract image. 

I enjoyed the process of working on the series of paintings together, I enjoyed the use of transparencies and mark making.

While I was working on these I also developed images in my sketchbook as well. developing mark making on collage.

Home Sweet Home, Exhibition

 HOME SWEET HOME

Solo exhibition

at The Bank, Beacon Centre North Shields.

The space is an old branch of a bank shopfront, all the fittings and fixtures have been removed and the floor covering has been lifted to reveal a distressed concrete surface. The window is large and open and can be seen prominently when people enter the indoor shopping area. There is a communal space outside that is arranged like a village green although due to Covid people are not encouraged to congregate and it is now separated by a one way system. As people enter the indoor shopping area they are corralled towards The Bank front window.

The Bank, The Beacon Centre, North Shields

During the Covid 19 lockdown 2020, I started drawing and painting puppets and toys from my childhood. I wanted to evoke feelings and emotions from childhood and relate them to adult relationships. Lockdown has been a different experience for everyone and I am so happy that I had the studio space to go to. But the images have surfaced due to some degree of introspection due to our enforced isolation.

I started painting the female Pelham puppet, The little Dutch Girl. I have depicted the puppet in a position that suggests that it has been dropped by a child after having played with it. The position of the puppet suggests despair and sadness in collapse. I prepared a substrate of recycled calico and vintage fabrics using wax to capture the fabrics and bond them together.

The vintage fabrics evoke a feeling of home life and simple pleasures like embroidered details but the surface is distressed and worn. I enjoyed the sensation of applying oil paint to the wax surface and my art is always about surface in some way but the tactile pleasure that I get out of merely applying the paint also evokes childhood and and a sense of absorption in an activity that children can experience.

Little Dutch Girl, Pelham, Oil on unstretched canvas

I paired the Little Dutch Girl with the male Urchin and depicted it in a similar pose. The painted expression on his face remains the same whatever his body expresses. the fixed smile can be read in more than one way. To me, this depicts experiences from my childhood where, when hurt physically by bullies I continued to smile and refused to show the pain that was being endured. It was my way of standing up to the bullies by not letting it show that I had felt anything. It also evokes an experience I had of being hit by my father and by teachers. When very young the feeling that I had done something well was always rewarded by physical pain and I think this has affected my self confidence in adulthood with feelings of failure.

Pelham Urchin, Oil on unstretched canvas

The hanging pieces I decided to hang from a beam that runs down the centre of the space. The beam boxes in electrical cables but is open at the top. I made hooks from steel rod that I stitched onto the side of the calico on the large unstretched canvas. 

View through the window

View from the door

These larger canvases, I also treated with a wax, as I used the wax to absorb into the calico and fuse the vintage fabrics onto the calico. The subjects of these images can be seen on one level as still lives. The Robot toy image 'Sorry Not Sorry' was in response to the figure of the robot but also the broken Pelham Mother Dragon toy. The robot represents for me the idea of gendered toys, this was something I wanted but could never have because I was the wrong gender, but also the idea of a male presence that may be controlling in a relationship.

I wanted to express the feelings of desire that children can have about a certain item. Those feelings of desire are the same that an adult feels but the object may have changed. The emotions are just as strong and as wilful.

Don't Touch, Oil on unstretched canvas

The porcelain doll I chose to depict as an expression of childhood instructions "Don't Touch" but this obviously has, she is broken. Will we be found out? As a child this kind of thing was always seen as old fashioned and strangely feminine in old auntie's houses. I never aspired to this type of femininity and found it alien, still do.

The egg painting was done rather quickly as I had worked out an easier way to prepare the canvas with the wax capture. The substrate was created and left unprimed before painting directly with oil paints onto  the surface.

This piece is titled 'All I ever wanted' representing the fragility of mental health and the reversal or parental/child relationships. The egg is a comforting food but in this case has not been prepared correctly by the child for the parent. The egg can also represent the feminine and the mother figure. In this case broken through poor mental health.

This piece has come about through an inner dialogue during lockdown of my relationship with my mother and how the roles have recently been reversed as she has been suffering with dementia. She still asks me to boil her an egg! I think it represents a time for her when maybe she was cared for or when she felt happy.

All I Ever Wanted, Oil on unstretched canvas

The double puppet painting is more traditionally prepared on a stretched canvas substrate. I had used a black gesso to prime the canvas and enjoyed working away from the dark ground.

The double depiction of the toys I want to start the feeling of a dialogue between the two and create a narrative of what has happened between or to them. This one is titled 'It can be our Secret'. I have observed children talking through their toys and felt that it is a powerful medium for children to express themselves in ways that would be more difficult face to face.

It Can Be Our Secret, Oil on canvas

The nest painting is one of a series of studies of a nest that I found in my garden. I had to move it as it was not in a safe place for the birds to be raised. I of course allowed the brood to fledge and for the nest to be abandoned before moving it. When I did I found a single unhatched blackbirds egg inside. I felt a sense of wonder and delight with this simple finding.

The painting is again on unstretched cotton, this time the cotton had been treated first with a mixture of clay and lavender cuttings which was all captured with a layer of wax again before painting on with oil paints. A multi sensory one, this, as the lavender oils were released as I was working on the surface.

Nest, Oil on unstretched cotton

The roses painting, 'They were for you' is about a bouquet of roses from the garden that I had planned to take to my primary teacher as a gift unfortunately on the way to school they fell out of my hand one by one and what I actually presented to my teacher was an empty twist of tinfoil. Oh! the shame and embarrassment ! I can still feel it to this day.

This is simply painted with acrylic onto unstretched cotton using some collage of vintage fabrics. I merely primed with transparent gesso and this time did not use the wax.

They were for you, Acrylic on unstretched cotton

The Bank has a deep window revetment which I used to display the titles to the paintings and I placed some smaller works on paper there too, studies of the male Urchin puppet. They maybe weren't in the best position for display but served to catch people's eyes as they passed the shop front.

Pelham studies, Little Urchin, Acrylic on paper

On the whole I feel it has been a successful exhibition as I have tried to make the best of things in the Lockdown times where there is limited footfall through the shopping centre. There have been quite a few people who have stopped to look but also I have been able to have socially distanced private views where I am able to arrange with other building users so there is not a clash of people moving through the space. I have have some interesting feedback and conversations with my guests and actually it has been a nice way of doing it as at an opening night you don't always get to talk to everyone.

It has been a special time to get to grips with my own practice. I feel as though I am teaching myself to paint. I am allowing myself the freedom to express stories and narratives from my childhood at the same time working through issues of my present relationships. Like the children talking through their toys.

I am not sure where this is going to take me, but I plan to just go with the flow and find out