A warm welcome to Cherry Red Gallery

I have had the privilege over the past few years, of working in a public studio where people could walk right into my workspace and see what was going on. It sparked many wonderful conversations about art, inspiration, life and the things that have meaning in our world. Now that I work from a home studio, my hope is that this blog will continue those precious conversations.

With an up and coming exhibition for August's SALA festival (South Australian Living Artists), I thought I might share some of what has been going on at my desk over the past months. I must say, that 'up and coming' at this stage, with only 25 more sleeps until the doors open, means ... coming up way too fast. Sigh. Though all the artwork is done and at the Art Lab for scanning, there is a wheelbarrow of job lists that now come to the front. For today though, I get to sit quietly in front of a large window, looking out at the last coloured leaves of Autumn and consider what you might enjoy.

This years body of work includes new paintings to add to existing series and a brand new collection called 'The Cat's House' Project, an over the fence glimpse of life in a cat village. The original idea was to paint 2 larger scenes that would work on their own and also as bookmarks, by slicing them into 3 separate sections. In addition to this, these 3 individual images needed to be painted again separately to accommodate the different proportions of my greeting card range. So - Two large scenes and six smaller ones, three per scene.

'A supremely busy day in the garden' is being drawn up on the lightbox.

I spend time getting the design correct on thin sketch paper, before transferring it to watercolour paper with a light-fast, archival ink pen. Before I do this though, I ink the original drawing to make it easier to see, especially on fine detail of this scale.

Have you ever tried to trace a design through paper whilst holding all the layers up against a window? A light box does exactly the same job but far, far more comfortably. I have taped the original down onto the light box glass with green masking tape (acid free and low tack), then secured the 300gsm watercolour paper over the top so neither sheet moves an iota. It took 16 hours to trace the 8 designs to paper. Yep! Imagine that leaning on a window.

I have a serious case of light-box love.

'A supremely busy day in the garden' inked up and ready for some colour.
You can see the entire scene at the top and underneath it, the 3 separate card images that come from it. From left to right - 'Emmaline's baking day', 'Mr Nic knocks' and 'Everyday is princess day'.

Emmaline and Mr Nic are almost done.

On a cold, cold morning in June before the winter sun comes over the hill, work is already drying on the windowsill.
Thank you for visiting,
Cathryn