The Warrington Contemporary

Ok, so, exciting news!! You know the Warrington Contemporary Open that I mentioned in the last post? Well, as I said, me and my textile artist friend Claire, plus her husband and a friend of theirs went to the opening night. First we went to have a look at Claire's work, which was in the main show, in the second venue. There we bumped into some people from the Islington Mill Art Academy, which is something that both Claire and I have been active members of for a few months now (This is what I mean when I say I'm behind with news! Islington Mill has become a huge part of my arty life over the last few months, but I haven't blogged about it yet! That's coming soon, I promise). Then we went over and had a look at the photography exhibition, which is where my work was. Here's a picture of me standing proudly next to my picture.

A nice couple who saw this picture being taken asked if I was the photographer, and when I said I was they were so complimentary about my work! And it turned out that they were fellow photographers and also had a piece each in the show (which were both really good!) so that felt awesome!

Next we had to hurry over to the main venue at Warrington Museum to have a brief look at the main part of the show before the prize giving. There we saw "In A Flux", which is a kind of mini exhibition  by the "Manchester Salon" which is a group of artists including Maurice Carlin, known to us as Morry, as he's one of the founding members of the Islington Mill art academy. He's a really nice guy and a very interesting artist, and it was very cool to see work by someone I know in a real art show! We also had time to have a quick look around the rest of the Open Exhibition before it was time for the prize giving. First up was the photography, and you could have knocked me down with a feather when they announced the runner up and my name was called out!! Wow! That was a shock!

Here's a picture of me receiving my prize:

More pictures of the event can be found here if you are interested.

So, that was very exciting. And just when I thought the evening couldn't get any better, a lovely couple that bought a picture from me at the Summer Arts market in Liverpool (otherwise a bit of a flop for me - I didn't make the table price back!) were there, and came up and said congratulations, and how much they were loving owning my picture! She's an artist and he's a graphic designer - there seems to be a theme developing of other artists liking my work, which I take as the biggest compliment going!  The lady is called Jenny, and you can check out her artwork here. She had a piece in the show as well, right next to the guy that won the whole thing (my verdict on his piece - good, but not my favourite).
And then, to top it all off, Morry introduced me to a lady called Laura who had helped to curate the whole show and asked for my details as she may be putting together another exhibition soon! Wow! I would call that a pretty successful night! From this I've learned a couple things. One: never give up. It's a cliche but it's true! I was getting pretty fed up with entering these kind of open competitions, paying money to be entered only to not get accepted, and to not even get any feedback so to be left wondering if I was even close. But you have to keep putting yourself out there, and exposing yourself to the risk of failure, or else you can never have any successes like this! (The prize, by the way, was £100, so that should help make up for some of those entries that led nowhere!).
Secondly: people love a winner! I mean it in the sense that winning one thing like this can suddenly open lots of doors and get you noticed, and make all that slogging away worth it. I hope that's the case for me, and that this one event could lead on to more and more opportunities. I'll be sure to let you know if it does!

Inspirations and Experimentations Part 2

So, where were we? Oh yeah, things that inspire me.
Last time I was talking about how Rothko was one of my most important inspirations. I guess that's what gives my photos such a painterly quality; I trained as a painter (I also studied Fine Art at uni) and in some ways I still think like one, and take a lot of my inspiration from painters. A couple more abstract painters I think I am influenced by, would be, Patrik Heron:

and Howard Hodgkin:

So I guess those are the big famous guys that I look up to; the ones I own books about, have been to exhibitions of, had prints up on my wall and so on. But there are a few more obscure artists as well. Plus, the more I get into this project, the more I am getting interested in my photographic medium, and I am trying to think more about how I can actually shape my images using its unique attributes, and so I find I am getting inspired by some photographers as well.

OK, so an obscure artist first. Very obscure. He's called Balint Szombathy, and I discovered a book about him by chance in a bookshop in Budapest when I was there last year. The book is called "Signs of the City 1971-2012" and it features many photos like mine. I was really excited when I discovered it, to think that here was someone thinking very much along the same lines as me, but I was far enough along with my own work that I could feel like I hadn't been too influenced by him, I couldn't be accused of "stealing" his ideas, as I guess intellectual property has to be jealously guarded. Or maybe not. I read a quote recently which went something like this "Don't worry about developing your own style, as it will emerge naturally in everything you do". So I guess as long as the person being influenced isn't interested in nicking the idea wholesale, everyone can come out a winner.

Anyway, I had the thrill of discovering a kindred spirit when I picked up this book, that's how it felt to me. Like me, Szombathy had wandered around cities and kept his eye on the inconsequential details that others overlook, and had created quite abstract images from them. For the main, they are a lot less colourful and artistically composed than mine; which isn't to say worse, just more interested in documentary realism perhaps.

Here is an example, from my copy of his book, hence the weird curved pages:

Actually, the act of taking this photo made me look at the pictures afresh, as individually perhaps the composition isn't interesting, but taken as a foursome there is something really compelling about these images. Maybe the colours are reminding me a lot of Rothko again, I do seem to keep coming back to him, but it also made me think that a possible future direction for me would be to simplify my individual photos, but them mount them in a set with other pictures. That's the great thing about visual arts, if you keep your eyes and mind open, the sources of inspiration are endless!

Ok, that's all for today, but there's a lot more left for another day!

The language of the print shop

So, the day of the first art market inches closer and closer! After a few false starts, my pictures are now with the printers and I'm reasonably confident that things should proceed without any further hiccups, although of course, wherever technology is concerned there's always room for things to go wrong, so I won't count my chickens before they've hatched! However, they printed me off some copies of my pictures, only as a laser jet print instead of the all singing, all dancing version that the final ones will be, and I'm really pleased with how they look.
I'm pretty much a beginner when it comes to the technical jargon that printers use, which is like a totally different language, but having done a few courses on Adobe Creative suite software earlier this year -the artist/designers holy trinity: Photoshop (the one I use all the time), InDesign and Illustrator - and in conversation with the lovely guy back in Exeter that used to do my giclée prints, I now know a bit more than I used to. So, for example I know that modern print technology is based around printing in the CMYK colour range, which is different from RGB, and as my files were already in CMYK(learnt that on the course!) the bloke at the print shop assured me that their finished versions should look very much like what I saw on my computer screen, and how the laser prints came out. So, judging by the laser prints, things are looking good!
Here's one of the new images I got printed today:

I've also had my first attempt at mounting a piece of my work, which turned out a bit rough around the edges, but generally went OK I think. The mounted artwork is another mini project I'm working on; image transfers (kind of lo-fi home made prints) of my pictures that are then hand painted/ coloured afterwards. That's still very much an on-going project, but I'm quite pleased with how this particular one worked out.                                                                                                                                         

So, so far so good.

Welcome to my blog!

Well hello and welcome to my blog! I am an abstract photographer who has recently made a couple of big, scary changes to her life. I've packed in the day job and gone full time as a working artist, and I've moved from the relative quite life in Exeter, Devon to the hustle and bustle of the big city in Manchester.

This blog will therefore be a record of my journey of finding out about the art scene in the North West of England and beyond, and in seeing if I can really make it as an artist in these tough economic times. I hope to share with you lots of examples of my work, of which the picture above is a fairly typical example, as well as other aspects of my day to day arty experiences, plus share the work of other artists/exhibitions/resources etc. that may be interest to any arty minded folk out there! So, if any of that sounds like your cup of tea, then WELCOME! Pull up a comfy chair, grab a brew and a biscuit and please join me in the world of EVERYDAY ABSTRACTS.