100 ammonites virtual exhibition - a sneaky peek!

Exhibition opens 6th April 2017....

100 ammonites project a sneaky peek ©2017LisaLeQuelenec

I hope you will join me here next week.

New reproduction prints now available

Images available on Fine Art America  ©2016LisaLeQuelenec

This last few weeks has seen me updating images on to my Red Bubble store and also making images available to buy through Fine Art America. The images are available in a number of different formats both framed and unframed, on canvas, as cards and also on other products. It is very easy to order from either site and both companies have money back guarantees.

It has been interesting to me to see the work in a portfolio view like this (almost like an online exhibition) to see the themes and connections between the pieces. It also has given me ideas for new work so another few pages have been filled up in my notebook with ideas and thumbnails. It is a lengthy and time consuming process (especially when you get sidetracked with yet another idea) and has kept me away from painting and printing. Over the next few weeks I will be adding more images as time allows. For now back to work...

Busy, busy, busy....

Into the blue
acrylic on card 8x8cm
©2011 Lisa Le Quelenec

Soar! framed in a 10x10inch whitewashed ash
with a double white textured mount

Exhibitions seem to come along like buses and deadlines have been coming thick and fast. (I'm sure I've said that before on this blog...) On top of finishing paintings for shows, time has been taken up with mount cutting, framing, cello wrapping, labeling, stewarding at the Hayloft and preperation for a commission. I love to be busy and I'm not complaining but I do wonder why it is when I'm upto my eyeballs that I have all these ideas racing through my head for new work. I've a few pages of thumbnails and notes just waiting to be explored, if only I could invent a way of gaining just a few hours extra in a day.

Anyhoo, hopefully I've managed to photograph these two peices of work with out too much reflection in the glass. The first is of a tiny study, just 8x8cm. It's painted on bevelled edged mountboard (I used a mountcutter to get the angle after it was painted so the edges would be clean white.) and floated onto a second piece of card. To set the image back in the frame a hidden mount lies under the upper mount raising it to keep the image away from the glass. (I do hope this makes sense?)

The second photo Soar! - which you may remember from a couple of posts ago is now framed in a double mount with a 10x10 inch white washed ash frame. The warmth of the wood coming through the wash fits well with the warm colour in the cloud and keeps everything quite subtle. Both of these pieces will be coming with me to the Christmas Arts & Crafts Fair at Hobourne on Sunday. The venue has been renovated since I was there last year and I can't wait to see the work that has been done - it was lovely before but I'm told it is even better now. If you are in the area do stop by and say hello it would be lovely to see you.

A trip to the Smoke

I'm back after a stay in London, 'refilling the creative well' visiting exhibitions and museums.  The initial reason for the trip was to attend a concert at the Royal Albert Hall to see Pink Martini, who describe themselves as a thirteen piece mini orchestra - a fusion of many styles, eras and cultures. Click here to see a recording on YouTube of one of their tracks. I love this band and often have the Cd's playing in the background whilst I paint. The concert was fantastic and I hope I can get to see them play again soon.

The two top of my list exhibitions that I wanted to see were 'Degas and the Ballet - Picturing Movement' at the Royal Academy and The Royal Society of Marine Artists at the Mall Galleries . The Degas exhibition didn't disappoint, I read this in depth review last month and had been really looking forward to it. I am a great admirer of Degas, his use of colour is something that I particularly enjoy. He is also the first name that springs to my mind when someone mentions pastel and I couldn't wait to get up close to examine the marks and methods of application that he used.

There were many drawings on display which I thought made a nice change. Quite often I prefer to look at an artists drawings, sketchbooks and preparatory work than their paintings. I like to see the process behind the end product, which explains just why I do so much blog hopping. Could it be in the future that exhibitions will display blog posts next to paintings? There's a thought.... I guess it's already happening with QR codes on the labels of each picture that take you to a website which I see some places are doing. I wonder what Degas' blog would have looked like...

Also at the Royal Academy is an exhibition by Frank Bowling of works on paper, these are abstract pieces full of sensitive mark making and glorious colour and light.

On the left are some of the colour notes I made. I often make thumbnails of the colours of paintings and their relative proportions to each other. This is something that I picked up after seeing an exhibition of Joesph Albers where I saw lots of studies where he explored not only one colour in relation to another but also the effect proportion played on their relationship. It can be a good exercise to borrow another artist's colours/colour proportions and paint your own subject and style. Making the same image with one done in opposite proportions of the colours can make for interesting comparisons.


The Marine Artists exhibition is also well worth a visit, some of the artists whose work that I particularly liked were Keith Noble, Rowena Wright, Keith Richens and Ian Phillips.  The paintings that attracted me the most were the ones where the artist had painted the light, which might sound odd but a fair few had more of a focus on colour, pattern or composition. It would be hard to pick a favourite out of the show but one that caught my eye was 'Silver Sands, Long Rock' by Keith Noble. The light was delicious and whilst it wasn't a big painting it drew me in with it's sunlight from across the gallery. I spent a long time there looking at all the work (over 300 pieces) and could have spent longer but His Nibbs was in the park waiting. As it turned out I needn't have hurried as he was being entertained by these lovelies...