an artists' view

an artists' view

Saturday 2 July 2011

Studios; Textiles; War

I've been very busy recently; moving into a fantastic space in Westgate Studios, which is massive compared with the previous studio I had there.
The textiles course I've been doing is coming to an end; there's only 1 more session to do. I'm hoping to enrol on it again for September, as I've been so inspired by the work we've done there, despite the fact we can only do samples.
I've got an idea for another piece of textiles work; over the summer I'll be doing some research on it, and some planning. I'm exploring using different textiles techniques on different segments of this piece. Of course it's all very well thinking about doing that, but I need to be able to unify the surface, so it doesn't look like a random selection of samples!
I sat in my studio on Friday, getting some basic ideas down on paper; it was wonderful to sit there, feeling I was back into my creative 'routine' again.

Still; there's lots of work to get on with, and work to complete.....isn't there always!

Jon bought me PJHarvey's recent cd 'let england shake', for my birthday. It's very impressive, and moving too. She approached it as a 'war artist', saying in interviews that although there was a long history of visual artists being deployed in wars, she didn't know of a musician being employed as a 'war artist'. So the songs are all about war.
One of those co-incidences happened, as I'd just read Pat Barkers 'Life Class' immediately preceding listening to Polly Jean. I'd chosen 'Life Class' because it concerned itself with artists at the Slade in the spring of 1914, and how they were caught up in WW1 when it broke out. There are references to real people, Henry Tonks, Augustus John, though the main characters are fictional.
Obviously I thought of Paul Nash, who was a soldier in WW1, who painted what he'd seen, and experienced. And who went on to serve as a war artist in WW1 and WW2.
Paul Nash is a favourite artist of mine.
And so is PJHarvey.
Both now designated 'war artists'!

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