New Blood Art Blog » Frances

TRACEY EMIN WITH FRIENDS

Frances — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:48:44 +0000

Tracey Emin RA is showing at the moment in the Sir Hugh Casson room at The Royal Academy. As I’m sure most of you know ‘Friends’ of The Royal Academy are allowed to use the cafe and restaurant there. I am not a ‘Friend’ but I wanted to see the exhibition and asked to be allowed in. I was met with the heat of an enclosed, crowded room of R.A. ‘Friends’ eating chocolate and pecan brownies and sipping coffee on couches. The walls above them (towards which they had their backs turned) were covered with the most explicit open thighs and such like of the ‘Walking with Tears’ collection (soft ground etchings, monoprints and writing).
I just could’t look at Tracy Emin’s work without relating it to the context. It was both absurdly funny, surprising, uncomfortable. I’m not sure it did any favours for the work or for the people who had their back turned to it. It was memorable though.
I wonder if she agreed to put it there in order that people like me would come away with a head full of questions and an uncertain grin.

ANOTHER LOAD OFF YOUR MIND

Frances — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:07:39 +0000

ANOTHER LOAD OFF YOUR MIND
I have just been over to Bill my accountant to leave with him my paperwork for April 2009-2010. It has taken me ages to get to this point….and I’m mightily relieved because I had a dreadful rush last year and I loath doing it because anything to do with numbers takes me so long.
On the way back I followed a lorry – I think the name on it was Wyvern. It obviously carries packages on behalf of others. The words on the back of it were these:
‘Another load off your mind.’
Those words perfectly echo the lightness I am feeling at this moment.

MARBLE DUST AND DOILY

Frances — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:07:23 +0000

I’d like to talk about portraits of two young women- an unusual subject matter for me. Imagine them to be life size on door-sized sheets of hand made indian paper. I made them prompted by my personal circumstances and by the challenge of making work to mark the Bicentenary of Bournemouth.
One is of a marble statue by an unknown sculptor (1850- 1900) called THE RECEPTION in The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum collection- so I suppose it isn’t strictly a portrait but I like to think it is.
This statue of a gorgeous young woman stepping out – it seems to me- for a reception- her head lowered- body projecting forward- with her pearl-decked bun and pinched waist, a lace-edged long dress and dance card/fan in her left hand. I am attracted to her because I am the mother of a beautiful young woman (who has just completed GCSEs) and who preparing for her ‘Prom’ in Bournemouth. Evie, my daughter, is in the same pose with her messy bun and iPod in her left hand, lace tights and short skirt. I use paper doilies (because I associate them with receptions and to indicate lace ruff and trim and tights) and white marble dust (which glitters most beautifully) to link the drawings with each other and with the marble of the statue.
I think about my lovely Evie stepping out as a young woman in present day Bournemouth and I wish her well. The hours I spent drawing Evie were so special. Both young women are stepping out from the confines of plinth and home. They are linked by the materials, youth and gender and represent young people ‘stepping out’ in Bournemouth over the last 200 years.
My contribution to the Bournemouth Bicentenary can be seen in Views of Bournemouth at The Russell- Cotes Art Gallery and Museum until October 2010.

FAIRIES ON A MISSION

Frances — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:45:07 +0000

Fairies on a mission- seed dispersal.
I notice that I wrote in my sketch book ‘taking off like fairies on a mission’ and that was exactly how it seemed as I watched the myriads of seeds take of from the willow on the undercliff just outside Swanage.
I could write about what it is like to prepare for Dorset Art Weeks – but I wont because when I walked out of the house to go on a very long walk I left all that preparation and anxiety behind.

The air was full of the white shimmering.
Tickling the nostrils.
Like silk between the fingers.
Like froth on the tree.

Every trip out I make I seem to encounter the air full of the same white fluff and it makes me glad I walked out that day. If you would like to hear about my experience of my Open Studio event for Dorset Art Weeks let me know and I’ll keep you informed. I open my doors on Saturday for 2 weeks.

PALM TREES UNDER BLUE SKIES

Frances — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:46:19 +0000

I continue to bask in the blue sky memory:
Reflecting back to my indian experience ( Ireturned from a 2 week trip to Tamil Nadu in February- you can see some of the paintings I made there in my artist pages) I remember that I realised a long held ambition to lie in a hammock under a palm tree and gently sway in the warm breeze. I’ve always longed to do that and I have a photo to premind myself of it. It is a reminder of my surrender to inactivity – to being held between two strong yet elastic trunks with foliage providing shelter and sounds. Maybe I should surrender to inactivity before beginning working in a new environment. I might get a little closer to connecting with the place…at the very least I can experience what it is offering without any of the sort of effort I usually put in.

FLAWLESS PINK

Frances — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:30:03 +0000

When a word crops up once it tends to reappear in a different context. Still basking in the memory of the FLAWLESS BLUE (see earlier blog when the skies were uninterrupted in their blueness) I find it again in a pot of paint donated by a friend.
Whilst walking the dog the other day (I find a walking rhythm triggers thoughts) I suddenly understood the source of the feeling of delight I experienced in the plane-less skies the other week. When I turned 50 I was determined to take myself to Antarctica; a place I wanted to visit so much that considerations of the damaging effects of long distance plane travel were over ridden. All my life I have sought spaciousness in the environments I have chosen to work in. Antarctica, in my mind, was to be the ultimate relatively unspoiled wilderness of a vastness I couldn’t begin to grasp. When I returned from this wonderful trip I understood that what I really need to explore is an internal spaciousness. Looking up at the skies the other week I was looking out into a great blue unspoiled wilderness of a scale I couldn’t begin to grasp.

DRAWN TO ANTARCTICA by Frances Hatch. Viriditas Press ISBN 978-0-9562647-0-1 @ £10 tells the story of my Antarctica fascination…ongoing still.
You can order it from my website or from any bookshop.

THEY’RE BACK

Frances — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:43:44 +0000

FLAWLESS BLUE

Frances — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:45:53 +0000

The flawless blue of the sky without trails and planes is exquisite.
I spent time staring at it again this morning. Bees and birds were the only interruptions in my field of vision. I cant quite arrive at an understanding of why I simply love looking at it. It is as if the scarred sky is healing. This afternoon I spread a wet cobalt blue on a good piece of rough watercolour paper and simply enjoyed it like I am enjoying the sky.

DELIRIOUS WILDERNESS

Frances — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:02:46 +0000

Sgurr-a-gharaidh. Rain-smoke. watercolour. 70×40cm

Sgurr-a-gharaidh. Morning. watercolour. 70×40cm

DELIRIOUS WILDERNESS
BBC Radio 4
30thMarch 2010

The title of this programme was guaranteed to attract me. I have a weakness for wilderness and I was not disappointed. The poet Owen Sheers described the experiences shared by the artist J.D. Innes (James Dickson Innes) and his rather more famous artist friend, Augustus John as they painted the mountain ‘Arenig’ in North Wales. They spent ‘18 delirious months’ together. I think I am right in saying that Augustus John never painted landscape again and J.D.Innes died aged 27 not long after. James introduced his friend to ‘his’ mountain and together they enjoyed a period of immense creativity.
I go away regularly to spend time with landscape and when ever I’ve been privileged to spend time in a place it has revealed unexpected riches that call me to respond with complete focus. However, unlike the story of these two artists, I rarely chose to share that time with another person. I find even having to consider somebody else takes my gaze away from my subject. I only go away for relatively limited periods of time and work and reflect from dawn ‘til dusk. I couldn’t sustain that intensity for long periods but then my life choices do not leave that open as an option. My sharing comes when I return to my ‘community’. By then the paint has dried but the nourishment I have received from the landscape is brimming from within and held within the paint surface. It then pours out into the nature of my contact with friends, clients and indeed students.
Towards the end of the programme, Iwan Gwyn Parry (landscape artist), described the way Innes and John seemed to be ‘painting into themselves’, ‘projecting their thoughts upon the mountain’. I know exactly what he means.
Let me attach a couple of pictures of Sgurr-a-gharaidh, a mountain I have been visiting for the last 3 years in N.W.Highlands of Scotland…just for a week each year. I spend a week on my own and 5 days teaching nearby. That balance of solitude and community works well for me.

‘IT’S GOOD TO BOTHER ISN’T IT?’

Frances — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:14:47 +0000

‘It’s good to bother isn’t it?’ says Mari as she paints me drawing her on the beach in Watershoot Bay by St Catherine’s head on The Isle of Wight. She is making a watercolour of me drawing her. I’m using a soft pencil and three different sorts of clay. The clays are oozing out of a low shelf behind me at the back of the beach.
It is good to bother to get out the sketchbook because although I’ve known Mari for over 30 years I now understand better how her hands hold their tools and how they flicker back and forward from paint to page. I saw and noted down (using a fist full of clay) the shape she made against the back drop of rocks and sea. Other clays and a pencil helped to bring certain features into focus. I leave the beach with something that will trigger a memory of that afternoon with my good friend. What’s more, the image grew from the very stuff the beach was made.
Sketchbooks grow plump with stuff I bother about enough to spend time with. It matters not that the images are eloquent or otherwise. The value is in the making of them and in the discoveries I make about my chosen subject and about myself in relation to it.