Where art meets meaning, and your space meets you
Paintings, sketches, digital experiments, and visual studies from my evolving art practice.
Love bees. They always pay me to a visit during the summer months and I have to work hard to escort them safely off my premises.
The bee is also an emblem for productivity, industriousness and Manchester.
That is why I’ve made it in one of the first pieces of shelf art I created. So people can look great in their online meetings surrounded by admirable and meaningful art that portrays their personality, is an uplifting, or works as a talking point ice breaker.
I’m creating painted potions. They look good, feel good (because of the textures) and they’re full of ingredients that do you good.
In psychology, it is vital to integrate the self. I feel that the painted potions I create to uplift home office scenes express all of my talents and everything I am good at and love to do.
Some might say it is brut art because I didn’t go to art school (for fine art) and sometimes I use my hands. But I taught in a world-class art school for about 10 years, and I wonder whether those years count. I probably absorbed the artistic rules and principles while chatting to colleagues about student work and the issues in the industry.
In the pictures are painted potions in the process of making. They take several days and weeks to make as I spend hours deciding how to build up the layers, aromas and textures for the desired effect. Close up. I like to use expensive fabric in my painted potions. Some of it is a bit of deconstruction another bit of it is about what they add aesthetically.
The painted potions I have been creating use helpful herbs like lavender, lemon verbena, rose and myrrh. They smell great. The painted potions also give a nod to crystal therapy as I’ve been using citrine, turquoise and other gemstones with their wonderful energy, so far. I have collected lots over the years.
One day I shall tell you about my early years as a therapist who used more fluid an unction, lotions and potions to uplift the spirits of stressed-out clients in spas salons around the world. But for now, let’s admire the notion of painted potions.
Those are the first two ways my experience is integrated within my panted potions.
Next time I shall tell you about the work I’ve been doing around the workplace wellbeing for 10 years and how that has meaning for these painted potions too.
I’ve been away, the break has allowed me to rest and I’m enjoying my new creations and identity. I’m a self taught artist and mostly do multimedia on boards with fragrant or textured elements.
I made these fabric disks in the Christmas break and originally had them on my wall spread out like the old flying duck motif.
But this weekend I was having a tidy up and rearranged some of wall decor. They look better layered up, I think.
I’m back to making and will do a few more of these discs and other shapes.
It’s been difficult finding time to make but I’ve managed to clear the decks for a season of showcasing my hand made office decor creations made from upcycled fabrics, cosmetics and skincare products.
It’s going to be a creative season. If you want to ask me anything about wall. Desk or wall styling drop me a line.
I’ve noticed the more we do Webex, Skype, Zoom meetings the more important it is to hand craft our own mise-en-scène. That’s film talk for how we look on screen.
I did this painting and realised how much it resembles a pineapple skin. Then when inserting some digital art I decided it has to be the world of pineapples too!
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