September 2025 Show and Tell

Before we know it the year has advanced into Autumn. it is the 1st of September, it’s a Monday and we have a show and tell gathering in our group studio. A well attended number of eleven members have arrived which makes for a good lively meeting.

First up are Jane and Sumi who have both together and individually participated in a series of structured life drawing workshops. Between them they recounted the different processes, materials and methods they were introduced to at each session. The facilitator of the workshop chose, provided and prepared all the materials which were to be used each time. This freed each artist of the need to bring along a variety of utensils and substrates which may or may not be required. Both were impressed by the professionalism of the life models and their ability to hold difficult poses which increased confidence in their drawing abilities. The chosen materials were good drawing paper with a colour randomly rolled over; compressed charcoal; willow charcoal; and a rubber. Prompts were suggested to encourage mark making, collaboration and creativity. The idea which I think appealed to most of us was that of cutting up drawings, swapping parts of drawings, then making a collage of them - a really interesting and different take on life drawing. 

Next up was Roger who, taking inspiration from his own flourishing and well stocked flower garden, creates wonderfully colourful oil paintings. He has a one man show at present at York Gate Gardens in Leeds and he was able to show us how impactful a whole wall full of similar painting from just one artist is. It connects and intensifies

each piece and becomes more than the sum of its parts. Roger explained how he uses his computer facility to constantly organise, change, combine or add to images and try out different compositions and colour combinations until he reaches one which meets his approval. This was a lesson in how technology can go hand in hand with creativity. 

Then it was Catherine’s turn to update us on her journey towards the conclusion of her year's experience of the Newlyn College course. Catherine has to submit a body of work for the students’ final end of course exhibition and she shared with us the pieces that she has chosen. There were eighteen small pieces of thin MDF each approximately 21 cms square. One of the reasons why they were lightweight and small was that having to travel to Cornwall by train meant carrying all her equipment with her. So the idea of covering an exhibition space with a quantity of smaller works was attractive but partly out of necessity. It would be incorrect to assume that painting smaller works is an easier task than creating a larger piece. Small pieces have their own unique problems, not least of which is scale. These paintings are based on the rolling, wild and wide moorland landscape which is part of Catherine's environment. How do you depict such a panorama within a small window of vision? Well with pieces of her own collaged papers and a limited palette of just three colours Catherine has demonstrated how she has mastered that particular problem. The paintings were laid out in lines the right way up, which Catherine had already determined. However when viewed from different angles they worked well whichever way up they were, as well as grouped together in a variety of combinations. This has been such a rewarding year for Catherine where she has felt encouraged to build and expand on her existing skills and experience. As a group I personally feel that we also reaped some of that reward via the show and tell sessions.

We were almost in danger of running out of time but were intrigued and curious to hear Jean present two of her current works. These were two medium sized pieces of around 75 cms x 55 cms on board energetically painted in acrylics then, working from impulse and aptitude, intuitive pourings and drips of inks had been applied. Over the summer Jean had been away with her family experiencing things slightly out of her comfort zone. Rides on a roller coaster, a cork screw and a drop tower had ticked one of her boxes and the euphoria of having survived these exploits seemed to be reflected in these exciting pieces. Looking at what worked about them and what might be next step invited various suggestions which I think Jean found encouraging. It’s always good to get other artists’ thoughts and another viewpoint can often help you find what you are looking for.

Finally it was my turn to show a small body of recent work. These all originated from four pieces of card which I used to daub left over quantities of paint from a few larger paintings I was working on. This resulted from a frugal habit of not wanting to waste or throw away remaining scraps. After a while the method and the given randomness of colour choices on these started to appeal to me as a way of working, so the left overs are slowly starting to become my main pieces. This prompted me to start looking at Joan Mitchell's work and I really appreciated the feedback on the relationship between my work and her methods and ways of working as well as the discussion on composition, mark making and things like painting up to the edges or isolating the composition within a border. 

Today's meeting felt so positive and seemed to me to be almost a milestone marking how far we have come in the progress of our group over the last three years.