Skip to main content

Art School

After leaving my graphic design job, I was lucky enough to get my portfolio accepted into the Visual Arts undergraduate course in Pittville Art School. Pittville is an awesomely cool campus at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, UK.

It was a childhood dream to go, not only to art school and paint, but to go to this actual college. I have memories of driving past the college as an elementary school student, thinking how lucky the students were to be able to paint ALL day! The miseries of math were far behind them and that alone sounded appealing.

I loved practically every minute of my time at Pittville, it was like everything had finally clicked into place for me. Well almost everything, I was a mess in the print room but somehow managed to scramble at the end of each semester to pull it all together. Ceramics seemed too easy at times, I should have found more ways to challenge myself, but painting and printmaking gave me the stimulation I was looking for and it was good to coast for part of the time. I made it a habit to work on paintings in the morning and ceramics after liquid lunches at the college bar LOL.

I could write pages of my experiences at Pittville and the things I came away with, but it is so big that I would not know where to start and would not know where to end. I will just say that I have never experienced anything that felt so right for me, nor having had a feeling of complete belonging, as when I studied as an undergraduate there. I am just so incredibly blessed to have had the opportunity to have studied at Pittville.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Sort of Artist's Statement

This is a sort of artist's statement, but far more boring and long-winded. My current form of blogging is to limit the text to as little as possible. I am lazy when it comes to writing and the blog tends to trickle off when I feel the pressure of having to add words to the pictures. I hung my exhibition yesterday, so today I will ramble a little about the reasoning behind it (and to help me get over the guilt for hardly writing anything in the last couple of months). Please feel free to skip the words and look at the pictures!   For a long time after moving to America, I found it difficult to process who I had become and the new meaning of home. I was English, yet found the American "English" language a challenge. This culture that in many ways was similar to my own, is in other ways completely opposite and confusing. I still often experience a shock by a sudden feeling of otherness and a perhaps a reminiscence for the past, yet I relish the possibility of ne...

Encaustic Monoprint Technique

Today I visited a printmaking friend's studio. Amy is experimenting with encaustic monoprints. I have never heard of this before so I was excited to have a demo. Here is the basic process: 1. Heat up the homemade heat box. 2. Rub the beeswax pigment sticks on the metal surface of the heat plate to melt them. Create a design on the plate with one or more colors. Step 3. Lay a piece of rice or rag paper face down on the painted design and cover with newsprint. Burnish. Step 4. Carefully pull the paper away from the heat plate. Steps 5-6. Clean the heat plate with paper towels. Add more color to the heat plate and repeat the process to add patterns or more color to the print. The smell of the wax is yummy and the pigments are really thick and rich to work with. I had a little play to get a feel for what the print is like (image below). Now I want to build a heat box and play!!

Every Sunset Is An Opportunity For A Reset

Hi Folks, Well, I skipped out on Cricketts Inky Art Blot to run Playful Potter, my pottery and glass studio for about 5 years. It was a wonderful experience and I met so many new creative friend, but now I am ready to move back to 2D works again. I"m not going to lie, will miss having over 2000 sq. ft. of art studio space, especially as my temporary work space will be in the corner of my husband's office! I am lucky enough to have a permanent studio space on the horizon, but much renovation and organization needs to be done to make that a warm and inviting space.  For those of you that knew me from Playful Potter, I am not saying goodbye to clay for ever. I just have the restlessness that all artists get when they have been doing one style for a while. I will be accessing a kiln as the need arises, for clay and glass projects. To kick off 2020 and in the spirit of the Year of The Rat, I am jumping head first into my new beginning; I have challenged myself to creating ...