Rukshana Afia's Blog

Another Saturday

rukshanaafia — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:51:52 +0000

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

Further explanations….

rukshanaafia — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:58:52 +0000

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

Some explanations

rukshanaafia — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:16:10 +0000

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 help of some ( free) life coaching from Alissa Juvan I started drawing every day by bringing an A4 pad and watercolour pencils into the kitchen . This was to get me started on doing SOMETHING ‘arty’ as opposed to trying to sell stuff . Unexpected personal disasters led to my daily drawing becoming a kind of diary – perhaps why most of these drawings ended up on my ( personal ) fb page . I probably won’t keep them there forever – it no longer seems appropriate . The tree drawings and maybe their derivatives are destined for a new blog that my partner , a medical herbalist , is in the process of setting up as a collaboration . The others have been designs for new work , greetings cards , colour & line studies , hand-eye co-ordination exercises etc. More seriously , perhaps , I have noticed the re-emergence of dragons ( a longtime obsession I thought was over ) and that my drawings of trees seem to be moving me towards landscapes . I am also more drawn to other landscape artists’ work – I used to hate the genre/subject ! Never say never . Anyway here are some of my drawings July 2010 – March 2011 :

New Drawings

rukshanaafia — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:46:47 +0000

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 .

Latest drawings and essays from 2000 , 2001

rukshanaafia — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:17:56 +0000

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

George Shaw

rukshanaafia — Sun, 08 May 2011 19:30:36 +0000

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 .

3 Figurative Work

rukshanaafia — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:09:33 +0000

Initially I made some figurines for a college project obviously inspired by Ancient Near Eastern carved examples .

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 .

I have also combined ceramics and felt as in these pieces .

rukshanaafia — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:51:15 +0000

” Murna’s skirt Islamicized “detail of above

detail of 8-pointed star

I increased complexity by cutting and reassembling felts , usually into circles and also using other fabrics in the construction such as quilted silk and block printed cotton .

rukshanaafia — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:42:40 +0000

I found my ideal background for hand as well as machine embroidery . The surface of handmade felt can be varied in colour and texture and then later embroidered to tone or contrast eg.

rukshanaafia — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:56:48 +0000