Horse and Art 2017

I’ve just been in Europe for 5 weeks! While there, I attended a wonderful, unusual artist’s residency called Horse and Art.

The two program was in a tiny town called Barnag, in rural Hungary, and it emphasised the connection between equestrian arts and visual arts. I got a chance to use my Hungarian language skills, my printmaking skills, and to have a lot of fun working with horses for the first time in my life, having interactions with these beautiful animals that were a far cry from the four standard 2 hour trail rides I’d done in the past.

As a consequence, I did a lot of art. Of horses.

Depicting horses is something I used to do significantly more in the past, before my practice switched to one based more on my own personal observation. I love horses and I love depicting them, but I think I became a little bit worried over the years about avoiding cliche, because horses can be a very cliched subject – think of the painting of the dramatic rearing steed, a herd of galloping horses, or the beautiful pony with flowers in his mane. So I admit that I was a little anxious to resume depicting horses in my work.

I decided to spend time with them, to observe the movement of their bodies, the way the light shone off their coats, the way they moved, the shiver of their muscles and the angles of their moving legs and heads. I created works based on their shifting, contorting bodies.

Zselyke’s chest and legs

Zselyke in print

Arabell dealing with an itch

I also did a lot of work to do with the environment. Barnag is a beautiful place, rolling fields and spectacular skies, covered in wildflowers, thyme, herbs, and berries. 

One of the horses, Arabell, would roll in the field and get covered in stains from the dewberries and blackberries. I was intrigued by the berries, and so I did several works based on Arabell’s interaction with them.

The horse herself

An intaglio print, coloured with berries

Woodcut

hand-coloured version of the same woodcut

Small sketch

I also did some other works involving berries, depicting the other horses.

Finally, something non-horse related. A painting of some of the wonderful wildflowers, following on from my wildflower painting I did in Canada. I did this in a much looser style than I usually work, emphasising the ephemeral nature of these abundant plants.

Painting from life

A bouquet of wildflowers and weeds

It was half the length of my previous residency, but it was a very busy, involved time. I met some wonderful people and had some wonderful interactions with the horses. This is a beautiful part of the world – the Hungarians value horses very much, having a history of equestrian skill going right back to the Huns, and the hosts, Beáta and Marton, have wonderful responsive horses whom they work with in a very natural way (lots of bareback riding, significantly less tack than most other equestrian disciplines.) It didn’t matter that I hadn’t had the experience with horses the other residents had had – I was given the opportunity to learn at the pace I was capable of. Now that I’m back in Australia I’d really like to continue riding, although I’m not sure how yet, given that I don’t have a horse or access to a horse!

Redbubble, Spoonflower, and other forms of accessible art!

I’m really happy to belatedly announce that I now have a Redbubble store!

I’ve had people asking about purchasing prints of my art for a very long time, and I finally got around to creating a Redbubble store! Primarily I was intending to sell prints, especially to international customers (as Redbubble handles the shipping, rather than having to handle exorbitant shipping fees myself) but then I realised the other possibilities for my work. .

Many of the works I’ve previously posted online are available on Redbubble, but I’ve also created a new series of works specially for sale. Here are just some of them.

I catered to Twitter’s arachnophiles and spider scientists with this cute little knitting spider!

Repeating pattern of Japanese windflowers, drawn in highlighter

I began experimenting with creating repeating patterns in traditional media. To be honest, it’s such an arduous process that I’m not sure I should continue, but the effects are so wonderful that I might do more.

Galliformes

Capercaillie

Cloudberry

There will be more things available on my Redbubble periodically! If you like my art I encourage you to check it out.

The Darkness Torch

If you like the works in this post, they’re available as prints at my new Redbubble store! I’ll do a further post about the launch of my Redbubble next, and more information will be there.

Hello there. It sure has been a long time since I posted.

This year I had an exhibition in May/June, called The Darkness Torch. The theme was an exploration of the differences between working in additive media, and in subtractive media (dark to light vs light to dark, the differences between painting and woodcuts.)

When searching for ideas, I suddenly thought of a pink raven – and how the idea of a raven is so linked to its colour. Would the same bird be recognisable in a different coat of feathers? 

I expanded this into a small series of familiar birds in unexpected colours

Black Gull

White Black Swan

Bower Hen

Next came a few landscape paintings.

Scene with No Black

City for Cars

This scene was inspired by a day when I went to go and see a small architecture exhibition at the National Archives. I took a wrong turn and parked my car at the West Block, instead of the East Block. The carpark was deserted, and it got me thinking – how often is a carpark deserted, except for your own car? My Honda Jazz looked so strange and melancholy, alone in the middle of a city designed for cars.

South

This near-abstraction of a landscape almost killed me to paint.

Also included in the exhibition were some woodcuts I’d created. Two depict horses, as they were pieces created to apply for a horse-themed residency. I’ve always really liked horses, but I turned away from depicting them for several years, as my practice changed to one based more on personal observation and I don’t really have much access to horses. Therefore, I decided I needed to create some more recent horse-based works, to demonstrate that I have an interested in horses in art.
(I got the residency placement by the way, next post will be about my time there.)

Horsebeast

Winter Coat

The first of these was done on a wood plate, the second on a piece of plywood. Both have very different textures, and the line created by the chisel works very differently on each one.

Finally, I created a botanical motif based on my walks around the neighbourhood, seeing signs for fuel-reduction burns tethered to plants in the bushland.

This exhibition was the largest I’ve done yet, and the effect of the works on the walls ended up being absolutely wonderful. However, creating the works took a lot out of me, which is why I seem to have fallen off from updating this site a bit. It’s been a rather busy year, and I’m trying to get back into it.

Thanks again,

Louisa