When I decided to post at least on every date divisible by 7 I did not check for weekends when wordpress , like any other site , can be very slow . Luckily next month it will be Tuesdays . Anyway here is another indoor drawing using felt tips and watercolour crayon together .
Paisley/leaf , green/blue
Although I call myself a ceramic and textile artist I haven’t posted any new work in those media , everything is 2D and untextured . However if you look at my Facebook Page you will see that for the last 30 years I have worked overwhelmingly in ceramics with some textiles , mostly hand felted . The problem is that I sold my kiln to other students around the time that I stopped having access to college kilns because I finished my MA in 2003 . The same financial difficulties prompting the sale prevented my going to classes to get work done and hence fired . Somehow I never got started on clay work when I briefly had a studio . I wasn’t there often enough and was on a different floor from all the other potters . I also discovered that one cannot use the same space for both clay and textiles requiring a sewing machine . So I’m still stuck there .
As to the textiles , I found I was going more in the direction of introducing other woven fabrics and embroidering over everything , both by hand and machine . Did I really need hand made felt for this ? On the one hand it has a depth and thus richness of appearance which makes a wonderful foil for the gleam of silk and a strong background ( aesthetically speaking ) for metallic embroidery which I love : on the other hand it is made from wool fleece so is both heavy and weak ( as a fibre ) , is fairly expensive to make and is disastrously prone to attack by moths – so much so that I keep completed pieces in the freezer ! I recalled one of my tutors ( not a textile artist but a painter ) asking me why I chose it as a medium ? and replying that it was because I couldn’t afford velvet . But I can – if I reuse velvet clothing and curtains which I can get in charity shops . And silk from tatty scarves and wedding outfits is also available there quite often , much cheaper than buying habutai by the metre . So I will use up the wool fleece which I have left ( but not buy any more ) and then will adapt my technique for velvet . I intend to use more silk proportionately and will perhaps start some dyeing experiments as well as continuing to embroider . Another artist mentioned inkjet printing which her mother did in conjunction with quilting . But how to do this at home at all ? And there is only one sewing machine which has to do mending and alterations as well . I have decided it ( I ) cannot be used for making clothes .
Apparently Chinese New Year was yesterday ( I thought it had already been ) and it is the Year of the Water Dragon . My pottery teacher from secondary school asked me to send her a dragon picture so I’m sending this one since it seems appropriately watery .
Turquoise dragon
This gallery contains 12 photos.
I stopped renting a studio in 2010 – believing I could work at home in my room while saving money . This turned out to be impossible ; as many have found before me I am sure ! With the … Continue reading
Gledhow pond from memory 2
Felt tip trial 1
I decided to try felt tips after the latest quasi landscape which took a long time in watercolour crayon and then had to be brushed with water and did not dry evenly ! Also I did not have much time this week because of improving my new Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rukshana-Afia-Visual-Artist/3100899152282208 with more uploaded images .
I’ve been having a discussion online about my practice as a Muslim Artist and therefore also about Islamic Art generally . This led me to try and find 2 essays done for my HND ; Some Aspects of Figurative Art in the Islamic World ( 2000 ) & Contemporary Islamic Religious Art( 2001 ) . I apologise for the lack of illustrations – they will have to be redone once I have found the various photos , drawings and scans again ! This is the kind of work inspired by my explorations :
HND final exhibition
HND final exhibition (2)
Gledhow pond from memory
I’ve also begun drawing regularly again ( all credit to Susan Gainen’s daily painting tips ) so here are the latest 2 .
Leafless linden/lime tree : back yard
I notice he has actually been shortlisted for the Turner prize ! However with the usual critics’ caveats on the radio ie popular , easy to reproduce , photorealist etc. Actually those speaking could not have seen his actual work . Habib and I went up to Newcastle , sometime in March I think , to see Dan Holdsworth’s treated photographs at the Baltic and found these amazing paintings on another floor . They are photorealist in that they are recognizable renditions of a particular kind of architecture and landscape with the use of Humbrol enamels increasing the colour accuracy . However I decided not to get the catalogue precisely because the reproductions do not at all capture the impact of the paintings . They are drenched in emotion in a way that some photographs indeed are able to be .
The exhibition ( The Sly and Unseen Day ) is on until 15 May at the BALTIC centre for contemporary art in Gateshead www.balticmill.com .
Initially I made some figurines for a college project obviously inspired by Ancient Near Eastern carved examples .
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By the last one I was already abstracting the shape and carried this further in my Hijab series for the final exhibition .
These owed inspiration to Aisha Khaled’s paintings but were thoroughly misinterpreted . After this I made 3 more figures
but found the chess-piece like shapes unrewarding to make and difficult to position , whether commercially or morally . I can’t imagine why I would make figures again .
” Murna’s skirt Islamicized “
detail of above
detail of 8-pointed star
