Family Art 2
Today was Affordable Art Fair day – I went to see my sister’s latest paintings in Amsterdam. Yes, folks, this posting is full of blatant family favoritism – so skip it if you can’t bear it! I love her work, our house is full of it. I just can’t help it. Don’t we all like to buy art from the people we love? Francis just returned from a trip to China and that shows in her most recent paintings. My absolute favourites were two of her smaller paintings. Francis always paints women and unlike us they don’t seem to grow old.
Next my 12 year old surprised us with a neat little wood carving depicting his grandmother.. more or less.Yes, she likes the colour purple and yes, her hair is grey. So it’s pretty correct. I just love the tiny little feet. Almost as good as his miniature goat painting of a couple months back.
THESE ARE NOT MY PEOPLE – PHOTO COLLAGE
This woman has been haunting me ever since I bought her picture, at a flee market in Belgium last summer. Tonight I found the right words for her. But how do I call this now? A digital collage?
Julie Arkell’s papier-mache dolls
London based Arkell studied fashion at St Martin’s School of Art in but worked with different media and even in the greeting card industry before she realised she wanted to work with papier-maché. According to the book she showed her first papier-maché objects at a Chelsea Crafts Fair in 1985. Over the last few years she has become widely known and collected.
Although these pictures don’t show it, she also works with abstracted text a lot, which I particularly like. Arkell has good literary taste. One flowery doll has the single word ‘almost’ embroidered on her apron. Another one reads ‘slow’. It is probably only fitting that Julie Arkell does not have a luxurious website. You can find out more about her here. or read an article about her in Selvedge by clicking below the next picture.
BITS AND PIECES – A COLLAGE SHOW
I have never been there and I don’t even know what it looks like – but from october 15 three of my works will be on show at the Bid Gallery in New Rochelle, NY. The collage show is curated by collage artist John Talbot. Talbot is also a one man knowledge center for the international collage community. He hosts several web sites chuck full of information about artists and technique, one of which gives links to loads of collage artists around the world. So you can bet I was very happy to be asked to contribute!
