Cricketts Inky Art Blot

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 ...

I have been working on a ton of tradigital pictures over the last 2 or 3 weeks. I had 145 proofs printed over the weekend and excitedly picked them up this morning. I have picked a handful out to be 20 x 30 photos and about 20 to be 8 x 10 photos. Tradigital art is where a computer generated image has been formed from a traditional fine art piece as it's base. I used some of my oil paintings and hand carved fine art prints as my foundation image and digitally altered them to make the final piece of work. I'm really excited about this work and the direction it is taking me in. My influences and inspiration for this work come from art movements from the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Here are the sneaky peaks: These are going to be 20 x 30 prints:

I'm working on the peacock paintings at the moment and some relief prints. I am slowly filling in the shapes and colors of the paintings, starting from the top and working down with each color. I'm grouping them with my 8 color reduction cut relief print. Also a feather linocut and painting, both in their early stages. The linocuts below are variation experiments based on the imagery above. It still feels like I am a long way to completion, but hopefully they will pull together fast at the detail stage.

Moving on slowly but surely. I am having fun mixing up the paint. There is something very sensual about paint mixing and the smell of linseed oil is simply heaven! It is difficult to see progress, but I am hoping that the paintings will all come together quickly towards the end. In other news, the pond is now full :-) but full of sticks and blossom after the heavy winds last night :-(

I don't know why, but I go back and forth over whether my work will be good enough to show. Maybe this is what every artist feels or maybe it is me being unbalanced. I have always been this way. When I was still a student in art school, I burnt pretty much an entire years work thinking it sucked and smashed the ceramic sculptures I had to hand. Lucky for me, half the sculptures were in storage at the school. I had not documented the paintings and wish to this day that I had. I don't know if it is nostalgia, but I think back to that work and think it was the best I have ever done. Too bad, too sad as my kids say. Next month is NadaDada and I am nowhere near finished. Actually, not one single piece is finished. Why am I so lame at deadlines? I wonder if it is possible to fill 2 rooms of a gallery with just a month to go. I have been thinking of different ways to fill the room, or to paint abstracts that could be knocked out fast... My integrity is better than that I hope, bu...

After the face disaster, I started a new painting. This painting will be a sister to the fish zeppelin and will be a fish submarine! They are both obviously inspired by Jules Verne, but also the collages of Braque and Schwitters. It is still in the first stage, but the composition is pretty much down. The other painting in the series that I worked on today is of Lady Penelope's carpet bag. It also has the same composition treatments of the last few paintings and prints that I am currently working on. I used to paint one oil painting at a time, waiting days between each color before resuming work. This was very boring and I often abandoned work before completion. Now I try to work on two or three paintings at once. Working in oil paint on a number of paintings at once, helps keep the inspiration strong and encourages style similarities between each. This time around, I have 5 on the go, yay!

I got myself out of a rut that was setting in by painting a Monty Pythonesque fish zeppelin. It's coming along nicely and is probably my favorite painting of this series of work so far. I posted a fish snippet onto Milliande to get a little feedback, so it will be interesting to see what the folks there think. I have not finished, but I am certainly done for the night :-) Whilst working on this, I have had a second painting on the go to keep me busy while the paint is drying. Location: Twin Lakes Studio

I had printed this miniature with 5 color layers over the past couple of weeks, yesterday I added an extra layer of white to soften the edges of the feather. In the background you can see some of the second version alarm clock prints. I have also started playing around with images to make these digital prints. The glasses are a reoccurring theme.

Last week I had printed a small print to go with the relief cut series. Part of this was carved with "Softkut", an eraser type of material that is stamped rather than hand rubbed. I had also printed a small white circle made from precut relief carving block, also by stamping. Today I added a clock face to the bottom corner, over the top of the white. I am thinking of exhibiting this for Artown this July. I am helping to organize an exhibition at Wildflower Art Village for the Printmaker's Conspiracy and have quite neglected the fact I need to put some prints of my own into it! The weather is cold this morning, but I see a few signs of Spring from the window.

Last week I raced to finish the snail painting in time for Nada Dada's Naughty Show. I finished it just in time and we hung it in the back studios of Oxbow Press. The front gallery had the "Naughty, Taboo and Just Plain Wrong" print exchange displayed. The weekend saw a large number of visitors to the show and I enjoyed seeing the reaction to my painting. I am still debating whether or not to add the photo of my final picture to this blog as it is VERY naughty! http://www.nevadamagazine.com/index.php/events-and-shows/details/nadadada_motel/   http://nytimesagency.com/preview/NTA2009062172208 I wanted to make a painting that was completely unexpected from people that don't know me and judge me by my outward appearance. Most people I imagine, see me as a housewife and mother over an artist. I wanted to make something that would fit both the critera of the show and to induce a reaction from the viewer. I would like to think that I covered both of these and I had a g...

The race is on to get everything finished in time for Oxbow Press' big opening. The clock is ticking to get everything complete and hopefully we will have a good looking print workshop to show our guests and new members. We put the walls up in my studio space and I have been priming them today. I had the help (is that the right word?) of my kids and hubby in the wall construction and so far they are still standing! The door painting is now finished (yes, it IS supposed to look " aged and rugged"), and just awaiting the logo. I have to find some more prints to frame for the opening and hand-tint them. I would also like to find some paintings to hang, but I am not sure I have anything I can find in time. On the home front, I have two birthday parties to arrange for my daughters, the first is coming up on Saturday. Timing is tricky as another daughter has two birthday sleepovers in succession this weekend and yet another daughter has another birthday sleepover the ni...

My name is Carole-Ann Ricketts, I am an artist living in Reno, Nevada, USA. I am British and lived and studied in England for most of my life. I travelled quite a lot over the years and my experiences have always influenced my paintings and other works.This year I have decided to take the bull by the horns and work on what has always been my weakest area: Printmaking. Having been something of a disaster zone in any print room I have encountered, I am looking forward to seeing if my misadventures are now a thing of the past. I don't know much about blogging but I will give it a shot. I will try and keep it professional, but chances are I will end up waffling about what my cats ate or what my kids did at school. Anyway, my goals for the year are loose, I want to concentrate on printmaking, but if the need arises, I will paint or do whatever else the muse would have me do. Along the printmaking path, I hope to get some work in exhibitions and participate in some collaborations. I ...