During the weekend of Saturday 17th/Sunday 18th September, I will be exhibiting my cyanotypes in my studio/house, as part of the Wokingham Arts Trail 2022, alongside artist Lesley Redmond, who will be showing her seascape/coastal landscape paintings. More news soon! Meanwhile, do save the date!
It has been a really hot, sunny summer - a bit too hot, but of course very good weather for creating cyanotypes! Alongside the simple pressed flower cyanotypes, I've started to use photographic negatives again and am trying something completely different - abstract photos. I took these some time ago, but was not sure what to use them for. It also gave me the opportunity to experiment with positives and negatives of the same image.Also I've started to peg up my images to dry instead of laying them flat - both methods have disadvantages I've decided, but for these it worked well.
I've been photographing dried roses as part of my body of work about the nature of memory. They are all dried wedding roses - which look amazing close up - papery and fragile. They darken more and more as they age. Here's my first cyanotype using a close up photo of some of the roses.
I bought a somewhat Heath-Robinson style U.V. lamp last year and have just been able to set it up, which is very exciting! It means that I can do cyanotypes without having to wait for sunshine. However, the exposures are much longer generally. I did a couple of test strips on textured Khadi paper. Next up, I will try some much thinner, commercially made, sun print paper. I always wear U.V.safety glasses, kindly sent to me by the company Uvex.
This year's international Twitter art postcard exhibition/auction TAE22 will be held at the Hiscox Building, York 25th-26th June, and then online to raise funds for The Encephalitis Society. This is the sixth time that I've donated and this year I have created an homage to vintage nest illustrations, using Polychromos coloured pencils and watercolour. I really enjoyed creating the piece and do hope it sells!
This is the finished Christmas card/decoration. It became Christmas Botanical Bunting and contained holly, mistletoe, fir, orange, ginger, ivy and poinsettia. Many people sent me photos of their bunting hanging up. I really enjoyed making this one!
