For me, my blog is a bit like an art journal in that it is a useful record of most of my efforts across the year. It also reminds me of some of the new things I started, some of the old favourites mediums I continue to work with and some achievements.
In this blog post I simply gather a few of the bits together starting with the boats above. In January I started removing the background of photographs in preparation for doing watercolours- what a journey that has been.
One of the things I like about making stuff is the freedom to gift it to people - I always like to have a stash of metal stars and hearts at the ready such as the stars I made back in February below
Fiona gave me a wood carving workshop as my birthday gift in 2024 - one of my posts in March showed that I was applying my skills to scrap camphor laurel timber in the workshop.
One of the achievements in June was to publish the account of my 2023 solo exhibition (Betrayal and Loss) in the Strathnaver Museum Annex galley. That exhibition was an art milestone but also told an important story. I think the Blurb publication can continue to tell that story. Copies of the publication can be purchased here.
Painting birds from our backyard in July was a first for me. I was surprised how good they turned out.
August saw Fiona and I back at the cottage in Scotland. One of the challenges for us at the cottage is finding the space to do our art. I have managed to turn the wee garden shed into a workshop; and Fiona and I manage to do sculptural installations in the outdoors when the weather is clement. One of the beauties of doing small water colours is that the kitchen table can become the studio space for both of us as you can in the photo below.
Fiona's solo exhibition Hame was hanging in the Strathnaver Museum Annex gallery for September. She held two booking making workshops with local Farr High school students. Their teacher Tracey brought the S2 students down to see the exhibition and hear Fiona talk about the work. S2 students did an aluminium etching workshop with us in 2023 and were very excited to return to check out their work that is now the Fishers post sculpture installed near the Annex. I was very excited for and with the students.
Whilst Fiona and I continued with our watercolour and completed 2 more assemblage sculptures for the cottage yard, in October thoughts of returning to our Maleny home encouraged me to gather a few beautiful stones from the cove stone beach. I carved grooves into some of them with a diamond saw and inlaid solid silver rod into the grooves. With the application of a bit of mineral oil the beauty of the stone and silver sung.
Each Wednesday I try to do a post on photos that I have taken with my iPhone. I managed to continue this tradition throughtiny yellow-green spider that was crawling over a grey linen pillowcase on our clothesline. Such beautiful contrast in colour.
In November-December I held a pop up exhibition (Brushstrokes - boats, buildings, birds and bovines) of almost 40 post card watercolours I had done thought the year. I thought getting that number of watercolours done was an achievement; but holding an art exhibition party to share the works with friends and colleagues was special.
As I said at the start of this post - this review of the year is but a glimpse of some of the fragments and variety of my art life both at our Maleny home and our Scotland for which I am very grateful.
