Dispatches from the Field

“I remember how I fell in love with drawing; Life drawing had always felt to me like an intense race between my memory and the present, and this is why such classes proved stressful for me when I was in high school. I thought that drawing needed to be a perfect reflection of what was […]

Do you believe in magic?, Do you believe in luck?, Do you believe in ghosts? An ambivalent magic that embroiders every experience – just ask artist Mark Bletcher, who’s paintings fuse magic, mundanity, and unlikely muses. Bletcher’s work is a self-professed compendium of ‘Modern Magical Realism’, with influences ranging from writer Haruki Murakami to British painter Howard Hodgkin.  His work, […]

Most paintings require a leap of faith of some sort – trusting an object is real, believing in the life of a landscape, or extending empathy to a lone figure really before us. In the work of this week’s artist Emma-Louise Grady, the viewer is asked less for their faith, than their upmost attention and […]

Your average day probably involves looking at an electronic screen. From work emails and texting, to social media and news stories, the eyes are always on a relentless quest for knowledge, communication, and entertainment. ‘Screen fatigue’ is a guarantee – where did caution go? Where’s the person who used to yell “Don’t sit too close to the TV or you’ll ruin […]

What makes a story? It can be hard to tell, especially when stories so thoroughly make up the fabric of life. As writer Joan Didion famously wrote, “we tell ourselves stories in order to live”, so do we even want to separate life from story? For artist Stephen Todd, it’s a tricky predicament taken up […]

In light of the government’s retraining quiz, we’ve decided to start a series foregrounding those artists defiantly persisting with their creative ventures. ‘Still an Artist’ is a show of support for art-heads everywhere, giving you an insight into the lives of our artists, as we meet them where they’re at… Lately, the ecstatic work of […]

In light of the government’s retraining quiz, we’ve decided to start a series foregrounding those artists defiantly persisting with their creative ventures. ‘Still an Artist’ is a show of support for art-heads everywhere, giving you an insight into the lives of our artists, as we meet them where they’re at… We start by highlighting artist Lewis Deeney.  […]

Masters artist Peter Kettle has created a remarkable collection of mixed media paintings incorporating rubbish he helped clear during an expedition to Everest Basecamp.The collection – Everest Basecamp Is the culmination of a 14-day trek Peter made last year in a bid to help clean up rubbish… See for example the piece: Prayer Flags Above Dingboche – where the flags are built […]

There are plenty of overlaps between art forms… particularly between literature and visual art, and as it’s National Poetry Month – yes, there is such a thing (!) and as this influence often goes unseen… I wanted to shine a light on the many ways in which words inspire our artists. For Toni Cogdell, poetry […]

In his Reith lectures Grayson Perry called artists “Pilgrims on the Road to Meaning”. At New Blood Art we wanted to gain insight into our artists personal roads to meaning so we asked them 3 questions: Rob Lyon The moment when you are at a party (for example) and someone asks: ‘What do you do?’ […]