Homework Exhibition
Homework
This exhibition is brought to you by King Street Studios Associate Artists, a growing group of local artists who have met together at King Street Studios over the last two years. More recently we have engaged each month via zoom.
As the title suggests all the work has been produced at home during the lockdown period and although artists are used to working in isolation lockdown has brought new challenges to each artist and their creative processes.
We hope you enjoy the diversity of the work and most of the art work is for sale,
With the future uncertain it has never been a better time to support local artists.
Please use the link below to:
- find out more about purchasing one of the art works.
- leave a comment or ask a question.
All prices are for the work: mount and/or frame, where needed, is priced separately
Viewing of a particular work can be arranged by appointment.
Diane Armstrong
Lockdown Chair.
I stumbled across an abandoned chair on my daily walk.
Laid back and rusted into place, I saw nature had stitched its mark all over its fabric back.
Inspired, I have collected rusty metal and wire from the place to form the structure for my own locked down chair, embroidering the colourful weeded landscape of its setting into its curved back rest.
Helen Thompson
This is a montage of 45 individual watercolour paintings of butterflies created during lockdown, they reflect the fleeting bouts of concentration and the fragility that I have felt. The butterflies paintings were inspired by the extra time I spent in the garden during lockdown. I found quietly observing nature to be extremely beneficial to my wellbeing.
Rosa Mackinder:
Lockdown: my good fortune, and saviour – my garden
All the time in the world to enjoy the moment, let my
Thoughts and imagination roam, observe and take
Pleasure in my micro-world.
Milan Ivanic
Isolation is my way of working. The demands of my normal life have been removed: I have nothing to do but work, day after day.
I am at home with favourite subjects, reflecting, abstracting, composing.
Jane Shimmin
The strange times I have been experiencing in the last few months have affected me in several ways. I am a keen walker and normally my footsteps cover many miles. The views I see are wide and varied.The recent limitations have meant my visual world has shrunk.
Whilst I felt the inevitable frustration along with everyone else, it also allowed a change of focus and a ‘zooming in’ on my more immediate surroundings. Spending more time in my garden and walking within the local neighbourhood and having time to ‘watch’ has meant becoming more aware of the smaller details. The shapes of emerging buds and leaves, tiny insects and the intricate goings on in my garden pond have all been enjoyed with fresh eyes.
My collage works are a reflection of this whilst also keeping in mind the imagery and colours which are a reminder the unprecedented restrictions imposed on us all at this time.
Diana Armstrong
Sunderland Point: Cut off, remote and lost in time. Unchanging and haunting.
Self Portrait: Lockdown, just before the Scream
Colette Bain
These paintings are a departure from my usual practise, which I’ve struggled to focus on during lockdown. Mindful of both the pandemic and the wider threat of global warming, they reflect a preoccupation with our interconnection with nature and our/its fragility.
Janet Graves
During lockdown, I used the memories of my childhood spent adventuring on the shores of the Mersey.
These are based on Crosby Beach, long before Anthony Gormley’s ‘Another Place.’
I loved the colours and the sense of freedom I found there and my paintings reflect this and
the dreamlike qualities when trying to capture memories.
Memories were a perfect way for me to escape the grim reality of covid 19 and
a chance to look back at what started my love of art as a child.
Carole Bennett
I was very ill with Covid 19 in March and this piece is about my experience of the virus.
Helen Bretherick-Stewart
Having tidied the garden shed at the beginning of lockdown, I’d unearthed some ‘treasure’. I knew I needed to stay out of trouble and became absorbed in making the triptych, which is a personal response to the theme of Easter. Over a few weeks I had a daily focus. The making process became quite contemplative. It was like taking part in a retreat and when I’d completed it, I felt at a bit of a loss.
‘Dance’ came about a few weeks later, when I was looking at an old sketch I made 30 years ago.
I developed an image which I think fits quite well with the triptych.
Barbara Holt
Studies for a funeral, 22 May 2020
During lockdown I started making small sketches – garden plants, the queue outside Sainsbury’s, people clapping on their doorsteps. I felt uncertain about the future, but direct observation of everyday life was a welcome distraction.
Our elderly neighbour had died in hospital the week before. On the day of her funeral I stood at the window watching as a small portion of her family gathered, social distancing as best they could, wearing black face masks to match their mourning. While I drew, news was breaking about a government advisor who had driven miles with his family to see his parents. My neighbour’s family had been unable even to visit their dying mother. We were then told it was ‘time to move on’ from that news story. Move on? Her graveside flowers hadn’t even faded. I considered this casual dismissal an outrage, and that’s what these drawings are about.
Kath McDonald
From the range of clays I usually work with, during lockdown I have drawn to black clay and its gritty strength, uncompromisingly present in the face of potential annihilation; a standard, a witness.
Construction starts with an idea of form, which then evolves when I work the clay and new unimagined possibilities present themselves. Finished objects are then a mixture of forethought and happenstance. The forms that emerged in this making process are clean and simple with polar contrast in decoration; perhaps there is something in this paredbackness which is also, for me, a reflection of these times.
Grace Owen
Life in lockdown felt a bit like riding a roller coaster in the dark; ups, downs, tension, enjoyment, but what I didn’t feel was ‘calm’, though every single artwork that I created during this period had a calm aesthetic. Personally, I’ve never been very good with the unknown and lack of control; for example, flying terrifies me and lockdown seemed to have the same effect for some strange reason. It wasn’t all bad, endless time meant more drawing, painting, sculpting, anything creative - though I did have the most bizarre dreams (good job dreams influence the imagery in my work).
‘Calm’, ‘Serenity’ & ‘Strength’ are three ink paintings created during the strict lockdown period and are pretty much the antithesis of what I felt, but what I needed and what many others needed too (still do! - we’re not out of it yet). We shall see what happens in the future, many things are still unknown, but hopefully one day we’ll feel a bit more normal.
Roy Smith
Some years ago after the death of a very close friend drawing became a way for me to work through my feelings.
Lockdown as been another period of enforced reflection where drawing again has eventually offered new insights into the ability of free drawing to pull ideas and feelings together.
Thank you for taking the time to look through the work from the exhibition:
Homework
Please use the link below to:
- find out more about purchasing one of the art works.
- leave a comment or ask a question.
All prices are for the work: mount and/or frame, where needed, is priced separately
Viewing of a particular work can be arranged by appointment.