The Kick-About #79 ‘Sheila Hicks’

Our last Kick-About was a celebration of three year’s worth of mucking about with materials, making, inventing, re-imagining and re-purposing. As a result, I suspect some of us have spaces in our homes beginning to pile high with ad-hoc accretions of creative stuff. In terms of scale, none of us may quite have reached the heights of this week’s prompt, the giant textile installations of Sheila Hicks, though one of us is certainly pushing it…

Jan Blake

“I have no idea why i have never seen the work of Sheila Hicks before and other women artists of this particular era! What a great discovery. Striking and powerful. Having worked myself within vast architectural spaces and in theatre, I felt a kinship with her idea, attention to spaces and love of masses of colour. I like to see through the colours and the mixing of the layers in relationship to one another as they move, held within a skeletal structure in architectural space. I have been collecting these netting pieces that hold fruit and vegetables and the metal tags that are wound round the end that have been waiting in the wings for an opportunity. Their restriction of colour bothered me at first and yet it was a release to see what i could make with them. They are bouncy and can be twisted into rather wonderful shapes that brought me back to something more organic and lively. Playing with the results on the computer to find new colours was fun if a little bit frustrating as my tech knowledge is rather limited! I was intrigued though about how the overall texture looked more like a tapestry. More food for thought!“

janblake.co.uk

Kerfe Roig

“It’s always harder for me to figure out what to do for a textile artist prompt. I know and like the work of Sheila Hicks, and especially admire how she has never become stuck in one way of working. I opened a page in a book I have of her work at random to a commission she did for a NYC Wine Bar that consisted of roughly embroidered circles – they look stuffed, but I decided to paint a mandala and then embroider the entire surface. My colors are brighter than hers, and my stitching is less irregular, but I think the feeling of it is the same. Start stitching and see what happens.“

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

Charly Skilling

“Looking at images of Sheila Hicks’ work, I was struck again by how liquid textiles can appear, and it was with that in mind I started hanging bits of yarn from a garden plant support. I became totally absorbed in the task and consequently spent far, far longer on it than originally intended, but I am quite pleased with the way it turned out.”

Vanessa Clegg

“I recently heard the origins of May Day (around “Mayday”), as in the nautical context, and it was one of those ‘Of course! Why didn’t I know that?’ moments. Anyway, as we’re in May, I decided to combine that with very basic weaving and sort of create a vague story… at least, in my head, as I was re-reading Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, so the darker fairy tales were ‘woven’ in. The other is improvised!”

vanessaclegg.co.uk

James Randall

“Being the slacker that I am I didn’t find a great deal on the web about Sheila Hicks so I settled on savouring the online visuals and contemplating the art of weaving. Having little in the way of craft skills, I took to the computer for some photo weaving. My idea was to take one pixel wide samples from a thousand photos and as they would be both landscape and portrait oriented combine them into a roughly square image resembling woven fabric. To make them a bit softer looking, I used the warp filter on each strand. I thought I would end up with a soft greyish mass – which I did, but when you zoom in you do get fibres of colour so I think the only way to see it properly is as a high resolution printout. I feel happy to have looked at all the photos – a bit of a self-portrait in a way.”

Phil Gomm

“I was very drawn to Hick’s fabric marshmallow-y boulders but knew right away I didn’t have the resources or the space to emulate the scale of Hick’s installations. But I did have at my disposal a large bag of crimped, shredded cardboard used for packing out parcels and I wondered if I could work with it in such a way as to produce some Hicks-inspired forms, while maintaining some of the material’s frizzy, explosive qualities. I flattened out some fine mesh bags onto a table, and on top of that, layered the shredded cardboard, and then dolloped some quick-drying filler onto the cardboard, before gathering the bag up around the mixture and tying the whole thing off like an improbable dumpling and setting it aside to dry. When I unpeeled the bag, I was left with these unravelled sculptural forms, which I then photographed against some solid colour in another nod to Sheila Hicks. Lots of fun at the arts and crafts table this week!”

philgomm.com

Phil Cooper

“After seeing this prompt a couple of weeks ago, I went and looked up Sheila Hicks’ work online. I would love to see it in person to get the full impact of those huge shapes and the wonderful colour. The pieces I was particularly drawn to were the ones that seemed to be flowing down from the gallery ceilings, they look alive. For my response, I’ve drifted rather a long way from Sheila Hicks’s joyful and exuberant big shapes and drawn something distinctly malevolent-looking over a photo of an interior space I found in a magazine. I think in artspeak terms one could say the black things are ‘disrupting the space’. It looks more like a horror film than a soft sculpture, oh dear!”

instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com

Graeme Daly

“After having to buy a new washing machine, I kept some of the styrofoam that came in the packaging. Call me a hoarder all you like, but I knew I could make something out of the grooves and shapes warped into the styrofoam mirroring the details of the machine. So I spray painted the styrofoam black and bought a bag of colourful cotton pom-pom balls to design the set of this miniature Hicks installation then lit it ablaze with some dramatic lighting and documented the process. Things took a more sci-fi, macabre turn when I decided to use some red gels.”

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

Marion Raper

“It amazes me how Sheila Hicks could have so much time and patience to make her huge fabric sculptures. After looking at her work I embarked on making some giant size Suffolk Puffs. This takes up quite a lot of material so I decided instead of fastening them together I would just place them at random to make pleasing patterns. In some cases I added some denim strips to finish the design. It is the sort of thing that has infinite possibilities if you had the resources and I rather enjoyed just playing around.”

Francesca Maxwell

“I knew very little about Sheila Hicks and it was quite inspiring to look at her work and read about her life. Colours, texture and layering, what more can I ask? So here is my output, an image made by multilayered glass, my default material after inks. Although it is not soft and warm in the way of Sheila’s choice of textile, it is still very tactile.”

www.FBM.me.uk

And for our next adventure together, the architectural preoccupations of Charles Sheeler (1883 – 1965). Have fun!

The Kick-About #59 ‘Augustus Osbourne Lamplough’

Our last Kick-About together was fired off by the super-saturated decor of Henri Matisse’s 1908 painting, Harmony in Red, also known as The Dessert. As Vanessa Clegg observes, there is but a small difference between the word ‘dessert’ and ‘desert’, but a whole world of difference between Matisse’s spatial effects and use of colour and those distinguishing the paintings of Augustus Osbourne Lamplough. With Lamplough’s evocations of exotic landscapes as our muse this week, enjoy this latest collection of new works made in a short time.

Jordan Buckner

“The magic of Lamplough’s work is all in the soft, low contrast haze. He managed to capture those dusty, golden hour landscapes with a gentleness and calmness – a painting that feels barely there. My own contribution isn’t quite as calm – perhaps a little more sickly, but an exploration at least of the similar, low contrast magic landscape.”

“One process I often use to get a composition off the ground, is to take my old paintings and remix them. I collage and collide them together to create new forms, compositions and colour harmonies. It all feels a little mad and chaotic but it is the only way in which I can find some spontaneity in the digital medium.”

www.jordanbuckner.co.uk

Tom Beg

“I love the mirage-like quality of the African desert paintings and was instantly reminded of fata morganas and mirages in endless landscapes. With that in mind, I just had a bit of quick fun with some minimalistic desert imagery and a simple impression of mirages. Are they distant columns of lights? An epic oasis city in the desert? Or merely just a trick of the camera lens?”

twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg / tombeg.com

Colin Bean

“I met this Kick-About with a beautifully decorated box, which, some years ago, was given to my father on a removal job. He said it belonged to a nun, but it’s unknown to me if it was she who presented it to dad as a thanks, or if it was just something the owner no longer needed. My dad was never one to refuse anything.

Inside the lid is a sticker marked ‘Relics’ and four smaller boxes are revealed. Each box, decorated all over with detailed floral sprays, contains fragments and objects collected on travels. Sadly, no body parts. In one are two pieces of building stone from the Great Pyramid… and so my rather obvious connection with the prompt. It’s a marvellous object and a bit like a transportable ‘cabinet of curiosities’. Apart from the pyramid fragments, there are some shells from the Sea of Galilee, a chunk of Fountains Abbey, and a bit of brick from the spyhole through which Wellington spied the French at Waterloo – and numerous other bits and pieces.

So the drawing (collage, coloured pencil and ink) that came out of this, is of that inner box: its contents and dedication. The obelisk (foam board, pins, beads and Pritt Stick materialised as a way of using the pattern of the red granite – useful if you happen to be staging ‘Aida’ or ‘The Magic Flute’ and you need a desk ornament.”

Vanessa Clegg

“Having missed the last two prompts I thought I’d try, with limited technology, to combine all three… So, drawing (Peake), dessert (Matisse) and desert (Lamplough). ‘Dessert in the desert’ (helped by an old yellow lens filter for the heat!).”

vanessaclegg.co.uk

Phil Cooper

“It just so happened that the week this prompt appeared I was asked to paint a picture of the desert by a friend from Dubai. I thought it was a fairly straightforward task, even though outside my usual oeuvre, but when I started trying to paint the sand dunes in the evening light I soon discovered it was tricker than I thought. The tones and colours were elusive and everything I did ended up too warm, too cool, just not right, and so the prompt was perfectly timed for me; I didn’t know the work of Augustus Osborne Lamplough, but as I looked at images of his watercolours, it was immediately clear this man really knew how to paint sand! The delicacy of the tints he used and the skill of his watercolour painting is breathtaking; so here was the master I could learn from to try and make my Dubai painting more convincing. I found it difficult enough with oil paint, where you can correct your mistakes, so I’m in awe of Lamplough’s skill painting desert-like landscapes in watercolour, where there’s nowhere to hide if something goes wrong.”

instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com

Kerfe Roig

“I decided to do watercolors, which perhaps lean more towards Turner than Lamplough, but the sunset feeling is still there I think.”

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

Gary Thorne

“Using a tight colour palette with aim for a unified tonal landscape, and making use of the palette knife to harmonise structure and composition, this endeavour at 30cm square, tries to integrate tree structure as much with the air as with the ground. Spatial depth is somewhat sacrificed when a push for atmospheric effect prevails. Lamplough’s blue-saturated ‘Cairo Mosque from the Nile’ (on the Lyon&Turnbull auction website) provided the inspiration.”

linkedin.com/in/gary-thorne

Jan Blake

“I have a book of sepia photographs I bought in a junk shop many years ago. It is full of these curious landscapes from far away places of a Grand Tour taken in the early days of photography. I was going on some short travels of my own to Cornwall by train and I was prompted to think about my previous ideas of travelling I have been musing upon for quite some time. I love these soft muted colours Lamplough uses and have tried to apply them to a short series of my journey into Cornwall. I have taken the contrast of moving so rapidly from the verdant lush quality that suddenly changes to moorland in a moment as you approach the landscape of the deserted tin mines around Redruth. As I was moving in the train it was like a stage set with moving sections. These sections move at different speeds so the furthest remains for the longest time with new images to the foreground that flash past. The perspective changes as well and I would like to continue this journey so that your eye dips into a valley… but I ran out of time!”

janblake.co.uk

Phil Gomm

“I wasn’t familiar at all with Lamplough’s work (much obliged, Jordan), but find his paintings completely magical, and can hardly believe they’re paintings at all, in so much as all that soft golden light and gauze is produced from paint and brushes onto paper. In Lamplough’s landscapes, I find the impressionism and light-play I always want from my own photographs, and it was a happy coincidence that Jordan’s choice of prompt should arrive in the same week I was experimenting with physical gauzes to produce more diffuse lighting effects of my own. Suitably inspired, I returned to a local bit of unadopted scrub set just back from the sea front (last seen on here under very different circumstances) and indulged once more my love of grasses, in all their billowing contours. First putting my camera into an organza bag, I proceeded to photograph the scrub as the wind pushed it this way and that, and the sun illuminated every quill and strand of it. Meanwhile, the gauze served to flatten everything out and flood the subject with light, producing some Lamplough-like atmospheres from a largely over-looked landscape.”

philgomm.com

Marion Raper

“I am trying to convey the idea of heat by using very hot and luminous colours. Augustus Lamplough however, managed to portray this by a marvellous technique of softness and reflection of light and shadow. His paintings are simple but very effective and it must have been so wonderful a time at the turn of the 19th century, to wander around Egypt with your watercolours, and just explore and paint.“

Graeme Daly

“When I recently came back to London after experiencing the greens of Ireland I was taken aback with how brown and muddy the earth felt, the grass crispy under my feet, the leaves and flowers with burnt liver spots. The world was well and truly scorching alive with a wave of heat that follows your every move. Sweating, I set out with my camera in the sweltering heat to explore the torrid areas and capture similar landscapes to Lamplough’s work, the park near my house where I run every day being the main jumping off point, coupled with the coloured slats, trucks and caravans in the midst of setting-up shop for a funfair. I wanted to explore taking the photos that step further – upping the exaggeration by adding a plethora of different shapes hinting at some civilisation in the distance. But is it nothing more than a mirage?”

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

With many thanks to Berlin-based artist and regular Kick-Abouter, Phil Cooper, we have our latest jumping-off point, but before you take a look, you might want to pop the kettle on…

The Kick-About #43 ‘The Night Before Christmas’

Our last Andy Goldsworthy-themed Kick-About together inspired some winter wonderlands (and some much less wintry offerings too, courtesy of Brisbane-based artist, James Randall). For this, our last creative runaround of 2021, we’re keeping things seasonal, with an illustration by Arthur Rackham for a festive classic. Enjoy this showcase of new works made in a short time, and wherever you are, and whoever you are, I wish you and yours all the very best. “Merry Christmas, one and all.”

Gary Thorne

“I jumped into this sweet text with no clear ideas, so dug out my favourite Pelican fountain pen and began a repetitive process of re-writing the narrative onto lightweight card cut to 140cm lengths. On completion, to counter the banality of what I’d done I re-wrote it, word-for-word, in free-form graffitti style; less mind-numbing, yet still clueless as to the intention. Days later, in woodland, I happened upon a magnificent, towering, perfectly-formed evergreen. With willow twigs in-hand, and the echo of Goldsworthy, I then attempted this balancing act. It may not be towering at 150cm, unless perhaps you’re that mouse not stirring on Christmas Eve. May all Kick-Abouters enjoy a healthy and happy holiday.”

linkedin.com/in/gary-thorne

Tom Beg

“It’s the season of giving gifts, but these days it’s more like the season of GIFs for me. I’ve been making a lot of quick fire animations in my spare time, and producing some looping Christmas tree things seemed quite natural. I think this one is suitably high-tech but festively cheesy at the same time.”

twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg / tombeg.com

Kerfe Roig

“The night sky needs no man in a red suit, sleigh, or reindeer to inspire wonder.”

What To My Wondering Eyes

the night lengthens
into hours that refuse to pass

the stars grow larger,
constellations singing

suddenly a bridge,
a ladder made of light

silence becomes a dance,
its ancient steps retraced

the circle keeps its promise–
a child will lead the way

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

Marion Raper

“I have taken some artistic license with this Kick-About, and you must imagine that it is early on Christmas Eve when the light is just starting to change before darkness falls. The weather is cold and there has been snow a few days earlier, which is now slushy . This young boy’s mother has said, ‘Hey Jack. Can you just run up to the woods and bring us back a little tree to decorate tonight? Your father’s so busy at the farm he’ll be exhausted by the time he get’s home and your brothers and sisters are so excited and can’t wait to start decorating it. I’ll never get them bathed and into bed asleep before Santa comes tonight!’ Christmas Eve is such a magical time and there is so much to do that it always flies by before you know it.

“And wishing all the Kick-About gang a relaxed, leisurely Christmas and a healthy new Year – artwork courtesy of Toby, my youngest grandson, who proudly carried this picture out from school this week.”

Phil Cooper

“The shadows in Arthur Rackham’s drawing are rather ominous, but I find there’s a spookiness lurking in so many of his images. His work is, on the surface, often enchanting and whimsical, but there’s a darkness and strangeness to them hiding just out of frame.

I’m submitting a painting that plays with similar themes for this Kick-About; shadows and light, mysterious things unseen, and a prickle of unease. I don’t know what’s going on behind the topiary here, perhaps somebody burning rubbish on a bonfire, or a streetlamp, or maybe something else…”

instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com

Graeme Daly

“Not much from me today, as I did these quick sketches on the journey to Stansted airport on my way back to Ireland! I couldn’t get over the eerie nature of Rackham’s scratchy shadows! I found his illustration horrifying – in the best way! For me, Rackham’s art always veers towards that polarising view of what is ‘charming’, where it is uncanny and not quite right. There’s something about the blackness of the line work, particularly with the scratchy shadows, and the way the sickly stained walls progressively get more bruised towards the top; making me think old Saint Nick isn’t as jolly as it’s told, and could be hiding in those shadows, ready to unhinge his bearded jaw and gobble up those kids as they run right up to him… ‘He sees you when you’re sleeping, He knows when you’re awake…'”

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

Charly Skilling

“I grew up in a very tall, very dark, very cold Victorian house, and although Arthur Rackham‘s drawing was done a quarter century earlier, the image instantly brought all my childhood fears back to me. There were shadows everywhere and permanently icy draughts that stroked the back of your neck, and then savagely slammed any door you were unwise enough not to shut securely behind you. It was great in daylight: high-ceilinged rooms and long corridors, changing floor levels, and plenty of hiding places. But when the night drew in…”

You you can find a PDF version here.

Vanessa Clegg

“I was thinking of the brilliant film, Nosferatu, with the shadow of the vampire climbing the stairs then put that into the traditional snack left out for Santa! Enjoy Christmas everybody, however you choose to spend the time. Have fun and keep cosy.”

vanessaclegg.co.uk

Phil Gomm

“On Christmas Eve in our house, there was always a tradition of telling ghost stories just before bed, often with a flickering candle for a bit of Dickensian ambience. Sometimes the stories were read from a book, but often they were created by the family itself, each of us taking it in turns to make up a new bit of the story, before letting the next person continue it, cliff-hanger by cliff-hanger. Mostly, these descended into fits of giggles, as my brother and I failed to resist the temptation to slip rude words into our respective sections, and by ‘rude’, I mean words like ‘bum’, and ‘knickers’. *Snicker*.

Christmas Eve has always had this touch of spook about it, and I think my sensitivity for this peculiar atmosphere predates any knowledge of Scrooge and his ghosts. It was just a night with an imminence like no other. Rackham’s illustration of these three boys heading up to bed captures this feeling very precisely; it’s there in the contrast between their cherubic faces and what is not so angelic about the rendering of their shadows on the wall behind them. I thought this a perfect opportunity to revisit that childhood tradition of a Christmas ghost story.”

You can find a PDF version here

James Randall

“Thanks Gary Thorne for your good advice to take a sub-tropical approach. And so I landed on the hot nights when the heat spins about you as you search for the numbness of sleep. I could have used a darker palette for night. I had the Christmas excuse to use the gold paint that I was too conservative to use previously – wish I could share the metallic on screen. So as the year darts to a close thanks to all of you wonderful KAers and your inspirational works. They amaze me every week and make me want to try harder to capture some of your spark. May you all have a wonderful Christmas and a healthy happy 2022!”

Courtesy of Kick-Abouter (and artful Christmas Tree wrangler) Gary Thorne, we have a new prompt to carry you through those moments when, despite all the food and other festivities, you’re twiddling your thumbs and wish there was a classic example of mid-Century kinetic art to inspire you…

The Kick-About #37 ‘Punu Ngura’

As a bit of a gardener myself, I am endlessly enthralled by the sheer variety of plants and their various habits and habitats: our previous Kick-About featured a uniquely rare blossom, and this week, it is artist Peter Mungkuri’s celebration of the treasured trees of the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of north western South Australia inspiring us to produce new work in a short time.

Graeme Daly

“My mind instantly wanted to create some cyanotypes, with their mesmerizing deep Prussian blue and infrared white, a process that is always a joy and I never tire of.”

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

James Randall

I take Mr Mungkuri’s works to be about a sense of place, memory and stewardship of his country. I tried to evoke a similar sense of capturing memories and the way they integrate but change and blur.

Tom Beg

“This image was an attempt at getting a kind of scratchy illustrative quality using the tools that I would typically use to make more polished CG work. I liked the somewhat otherworldly quality of the prompt, so this image, through trial and error, evolved into this big and mysterious organic-looking structure.”

twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg / tombeg.com

Vanessa Clegg

“This work is stunning, so a huge thank you for bringing Peter Mungkuri into my world. To Australian Aboriginals, the land, and all who dwell in it, is sacred, interspersed by marks of great significance. Finding one of the nearest parallels here, I looked back at Medieval Catholicism, where people lived their belief system (sadly that didn’t stretch to the natural world) and pilgrimage was a part of that, so… the circlet of Rowan berries (symbol of the Tree of Life/ protection in Celtic lore) is a kind of ‘votive card’, a prompt on the journey; to remind us we are part of a greater whole (this is where we depart from established religion) where the Sacred truly lies. The woodland floor is ‘now’ – not a Pre-Raphaelite romance, but the reality of finding pharmaceuticals scattered among the beech maasts…”

Rowan circlet. Graphite and watercolour on paper. 6” X 6”

“Pills and Beech Maasts” Graphite on Gesso. 2’ X 4’ ( Diptych)

vanessaclegg.co.uk

Marion Raper

“I love Aboriginal Art and especially Peter Mungkuri. He paints such wonderful patterns, shapes and colours, which are indicative of his memories of his country. I also learnt he is passionate about teaching the younger generation about taking care of their homeland. Good on him! Whilst doing my research I came across a game the Aboriginies played using stones painted with symbols, with which they used to tell stories. I thought I would try doing a similar thing. Unfortunately, there seems to be a shortage of smooth round pebbles in my area and I spent more time looking for suitable stones than painting them! I tried to think of symbols young children would easily recognise and could turn into a story.”

Phil Gomm

“‘Monochromatic plant forms’ was the start for me in response to Mungkuri’s painting. I was curious to see how ‘slightly’ I could depict my subject matter, how stripped down, and then use some of the techniques from this previous Kick-About response to produce particular effects. I was also thinking about the direct image-making of producing cyanotypes and how you only get one shot, and how the immediacy of the process produces happy accidents and unpredictability. The resulting images combine drawing onto painted glass (or is it etching?) with long-exposure photography, and I was happy with the resulting mood of them; plant skeletons under moonlight?”

Jan Blake

“This painter was a great inspiration, and I am sad not to have spent more time on it. Where I live I am gratefully surrounded by trees in the centre of a busy city. I feel their presence all the time, as I work at home. However, when I am out, the sensation of trees affected by light is what inspires me and gives me their stories. I was intrigued by the black and white of the images. Unusual for me to see Aborigine paintings in monochrome. So I have included 2 drawings in Black and White However I couldn’t resist including the tree outside my window that supplies me daily with stories in full colour, especially at this time of year.

janblake.co.uk

Chris Rutter & Evelyn Bennett

“Here is our ‘Tree of Life’.”

rutterandbennett.com / instagram.com/rutterandbennett

Kerfe Roig

“The layering of the different elements got me thinking about an idea from Claudia McGill that I had copied and saved which I recently found when sorting out files. She took a magazine and tore pages partially out to create a new layered collage-like image. I did not have any magazines with trees, but I have lots of surfing magazines I bought on eBay because they are full of images of sea and sky to use in collage. So I layered the ocean. My poem is a shadorma quadrille for dVerse, using the word provided by Linda, linger.”

weaving light
waves that cross over
in curved lines,
waves that land
inside the pause of the edge,
waves that linger cusped–

a small piece
of time, and yet it
fills me up–
I balance,
holding on to tides synapsed
between spells and signs

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

Charly Skilling

“I have been looking at some aboriginal art for some time and thinking about how to incorporate the shapes and tones into crochet, so this prompt was just what I needed to give it a go. This first attempt is very simplistic, but I enjoyed creating it, and will definitely return to this prompt in the future.”

Judy Watson

“The prompt could hardly have been more suited to me and my natural inclinations. It’s inky and leafy and Australian. What strikes me most is the combination of the loosest of ink splatters with far more careful and detailed patterning. I was going to explore some inkiness yesterday (Yep! Last minute again!) to see where an observation of Mungkuri’s work might take me, especially with regard to the use of white ink patterning over the top of the looser ink layers. But before I could begin something happened… Our bees swarmed! Later, I had a bit of a go at my inky exploration of Peter Mungkuri’s plant drawings, but my mind was full of bees. And joy. So it became an illustration of Hugo and me, arms uplifted to the swarming bees.”

judywatson.net / Instagram.com/judywatsonart / facebook.com/judywatsonart

With thanks to Evelyn Bennett and Chris Rutter, we have our all-new prompt – the cut-outs of Henri Matisse. Have fun!

The Kick-About #35 ‘Souvenir’

Our last Kick-About together was illuminated by Marie Menken’s experimental film, Lights. Made in 1966, the glow coming off Menken’s film is as much powered by a certain nostalgia for a particular time and place, as it is by electricity. Our attachment to artifacts of the past, and commitment to keeping and collecting moments-in-time, however fleeting, is explored in this week’s showcase of new work created by an eclectic community of creatives in the short space of two weeks. Enjoy.

Gary Thorne

“In 1959, my Mother took an emotional transatlantic flight from Vancouver to visit her folks in Bournemouth, whom she had not seen since 1951. On return, she brought home ‘memorable somethings’ for each of us four boys. At age seven I was thrilled with owning Sooty, hence today he is the most cherished of my possessions. My little 62 year old muse posed as part of ‘paintings of a morning’ achieved across the 31 days of August 2020, which mostly referenced local produce. This past week, this unassuming 20 x 20cm oil on board portrait was on exhibit in Whitstable’s The View Gallery, alongside 40 of my paintings.”

linkedin.com/in/gary-thorne

Charly Skilling

“Hmmm… Just one word, eh? “Souvenir”. First thought was of those plastic lighthouses from the Isle of Wight filled with bands of different coloured sand; or a “Kiss Me Quick” hat from Blackpool. (Don’t know why. I’ve never owned either of them.) Second thought was the original meaning of the word, “to occur to the mind”. And the third thought was… my little red tartan box! Never having been the sort of person to let one word stand where a few hundred words might happily swarm, I hope the following words and images impart to you something of what my little red box means to me.”

Vanessa Clegg

“This is via a friend who has a friend, who bought the watch back from China (obviously a while ago), so not my own souvenir but one I couldn’t resist! The star goes around, and I think the arm must wave on the hour… brilliant. ‘Keeping Time’, graphite and watercolour on paper.

vanessaclegg.co.uk

James Randall

“We recently had a wonderful day visiting the Queensland Art Gallery, which was showing a selection of master works from the Met. Great show. Halfway through it they offered a number of activities to clear away the visual overload, including a costumed life drawing station. I took the weight off my feet and did a quick sketch – my souvenir from the show. Since then I’ve been layering the sketch over some brightly recoloured charcoal layers. A bit of fun for me to do.”

Francesca Maxwell

“Here is my souvenir. A shell picked up on some holiday, turned into an etching a long time ago when I was studying under my maestro, now turned into a memento of another time, another place, another life…” Drypoint 15 x 12 cm.

www.FBM.me.uk

Kerfe Roig

“The prompt of souvenir seemed perfect: my daughter had given me a small sketchbook, and every day I sat on my beach chair with my feet in the waves doing a drawing, and then writing a haiku to accompany it. The sketchbook would be my souvenir.

On the last day the ocean was quite rough, due to Hurricane Henri passing by, so I sat far up on the sand, where only a small piece of a dying wave occasionally brushed my toes. Holding my sketchbook up to let the watercolor pencil drawing dry I was suddenly totally upended by a rogue wave that covered me completely. I stood up, soaked, clutching my pencils in one hand, but watching my sketchbook being pulled under and out to sea. I will replay that image in my mind for a long time, maybe forever. When I got home, I channeled my emotional turmoil into neocolors, drawing from memory the ocean that was now fixed in my mind. The sketchbook drawings were so much more beautiful though. At least that’s how I’ll always remember them.”

Souvenir

I could not
look at it from be
fore or aft
er, only
the angle of gone, dissolved,
empty, vanishing–

not just the
material thing
that had been
dispossessed,
but what it represented–
a piece of myself,

never to
be recovered–and
here I am
left watching,
clinging to impermanence
like water and wind

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

Marion Raper

“I mentioned before I am a bit if a hoarder, and therefore this prompt was rather a godsend to me. I have had some fabulous holidays but one of the most exciting was a trip to Arizona – the highlight being a trip to Tombstone. It was a fascinating place, and kept in it’s original state with a saloon bar, horse drawn carriages, and, of course, the OK Corral. It is said that ‘Death never took a holiday in Tombstone’ My souvenirs include copies of some old posters and a booklet listing the graves in Boothill Graveyard. The headstones include descriptions of how some residents met their demise, such as ‘Hanged by mistake,’ ‘Wagon rang over his head’ and ‘Discussion over fastest way to draw’. Life was tough in those days! Another treasured poster is an original photo of Geronimo and friends in the battlefield in 1886. The scenery of Arizona is breathtaking and I have attempted to paint the Chiracahua National Monument where Geronimo and his Apache band once found refuge.”

Phil Gomm

“I’ve got a number of scars on my forty-six year old body; the ubiquitous BCG crater on my arm, a hernia scar from when I was a tiny baby, a ‘hole’ between my eyebrows where I picked a chicken pox spot, and more recently acquired, a scattering of other facial scars following a particularly nasty attack of shingles back in the winter of 2015. You might call these dents and puckerings my ‘souvenirs’ of the wear-and-tear of just being alive.

One of my favourite scenes in Jaws (1975), is the sweet, funny moment when grizzled shark-hunter Quint compares war wounds with the more academic oceanographer and shark expert, Matt Hooper. The two men trade stories about the various different ways various different things have taken lumps out of their respective flesh, leaving them with anecdotes written into the surfaces of their bodies. Meanwhile, Chief Brody looks on, deciding against sharing his own battle scar, because, we suspect, his ‘souvenir ‘ is unlikely to impress. I know how Brody feels. With this in mind, I’ve imagined myself as being as colorful a character as Quint, and with just as many stories to tell about terrifying encounters and near-death experiences, and all of them leaving their mark on my body. These imaginary encounters derive from the spectacular dangers of my adolescent life, or rather from my formative confrontations with a host of larger-than-life fictional perils found in paperbacks and on VHS cassette tapes…”

Graeme Daly

“I don’t know about anyone else but I have felt a shift in the air with things starting to feel more autumnal. I may have been watching too many horror and slasher films, but for this prompt, my head went straight to the macabre…”

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

Tom Beg

“Near to my place here in Japan is a lonely, tucked away and somewhat overgrown Buddhist temple. There are thousands of these all over the country and they are always filled with interesting statues, iconography, mementos and architecture that give us a glimpse and a reminder into the history of places and people. I braved the 32 degree sunshine and mosquitoes so that I could capture the moment of that place and perhaps in the future, look back and be reminded of hot and humid August afternoons somewhere far away from home.”

twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg / tombeg.com

Jan Blake

“Apart from my huge collection of pods I have brought back, or been given, from all over the world my inspiration for this Kick-About came from a specific experience that continually informs my work. I’ve spoken of it before in a previous KA. It’s that time of year again for the storms to transform the coastal dunes around the island of Isle D’Oleron. It will always mark that change for me between Summer and Autumn. So I am taken back to the dunes, and those battered fences that are twisted and turned by the raging sea.”

janblake.co.uk

Chris Rutter & Evelyn Bennett

“We made an anagram of Souvenir – In Over Us – and this reminded us of rainy days in Berlin some years ago.”

rutterandbennett.com / instagram.com/rutterandbennett

With many thanks to regular kick-abouter, Vanessa Clegg, with have a brand new prompt to see us off on our next series of creative undertakings. Introducing The Phantom of Surrealism…

The Kick-About #32 ‘Low Dense’

From the previous Kick-About’s deep and velvety shadows, courtesy of animator of silhouettes, Lotte Reiniger, to this Cinemascopic vista of glowing, saturated colours by the painter, Brian Rutenberg, and all the new work Low Dense has inspired in the same short space of fourteen days. Enjoy the view.

Graeme Daly

“When I was an ambassador for University one hot summer, similar to the melting heat in the UK at the moment, I was tasked with taking down the graduate shows of the students that proudly presented their creative work to their family, friends and fellow students. I spent a few weeks dismantling the makeshift wooden stages, pulling out nails and painting over the brightly coloured stripes and symbols that students designed to present their work in theme with their creations.

One task I had to do was take large canvases students had painted on, and throw them into the skip near the smokers’ shed (where I spent many lunch breaks laughing and smoking my lungs out with my friends and classmates). It always saddened me to know some students would rather dump their work, no matter how large the canvas, so instead of giving them the heave-ho into the trash, I told my thrifty friends about the canvases, who happily decided to take them back to their uni homes and upcycle them to their hearts’ content, painting and drawing on them however they pleased.

I kept the largest canvas for myself. Dripping in sweat, carrying this beast down the iconic Rochester hill, I ended up sandwiching it into my tiny uni bedroom, but I never did anything with the canvas for years, which has since followed me along with two house moves. I have had ideas; I cut out all the silhouettes I kept from life drawing classes, and thought about doing a collage of all of them together on the large canvas, but never did, but I always knew I would do something with it when the time was right.

I have always loved Rutenberg’s kaleidoscope of colours, with the blocks of different variants of hues having such an immense power of depth to them. I thought it would be the perfect chance to finally let loose upon this canvas, and use the many tubes of paint I have stashed from many Christmas gifts that otherwise have been left to gather dust. I couldn’t think of any better way to spend a hot day – sitting outside in the heat with a cold beer or two, and painting away in the garden. It was a therapeutic experience to say the least. I think I may have to figure out how to make my own canvases”.

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

Vanessa Clegg

“Colour: I’ve had this beautiful little pot of rouge for years and would guess it dates back to the 1930s. It’s such a vivid pink and lifts my spirits in the same way the fabric (a recent buy, reminding me of the 70s) does… a perfect zingy combination! The “rainbow” appeared on the wall of my studio: a tiny oblong of jewelled colour in an otherwise white space.“

vanessaclegg.co.uk

James Randall

“Kick-About colour: I have been toying with a method for applying colour to my electronic scribbles with mezzotint filters in Photoshop. I applied it to a section of a refrigerator totem image I am continuing to work on and it seems to have worked, but you have to zoom in to see the colour which works in a kind of pointillist way without the effort. In other news, I have been short-listed for the Kilgour prize at Newcastle (in New South Wales) Art Gallery with my Isadora Duncan Kick-About painting (red jumpsuit / yellow car). It is a competition that actual artists enter so I feel quite chuffed. It’s now framed and will be couriered down to New South Wales on Friday for judging and exhibiting with the other finalists.*“

*Congratulations, James!

Jan Blake

“Edible colours oooooooo! I was fascinated by Rutenberg’s YouTube videos. The joy he brings to the work. So visceral as well.

This weekend, I happened to go to an exhibition at Bristol’s Botanic garden. It was showing work from a residency by Artist in residence, Alex Hirtzel, in association with biologist, Dr. David Lawson. It was called Displays Decoded – The Multi-sensory language of flowers. In part of that exhibition, the artist had explored how, scientifically, the bee or other insects see colour. For us it appears that they see the ultra violet, and radiation of heat attracts them, as bees particularly cannot feast on the flower until it emits over 30 degrees. So there are lots of them around at the moment. Making hay while the sun shines! Thinking of Brian Rutenberg, I found myself watching a bee entering the Antirrhinums on my balcony and wondered what they would be seeing or feeling within that flower that they seemed to have to force their way in. I have tried to capture some of that possibility without UV! It looks a little Georgia O’Keefe to me now. Getting into sensations and how to describe them needs a lot more exploration.“

janblake.co.uk

Charly Skilling

“This painting makes me think of shanty towns, rift valleys, and the coming of night. I was interested in the way Rutenberg combines angular blocks of colour with broad sweeps of undefined colours that merge and separate. I played about with some paints and pens, but my thoughts kept turning to how I might create a similar effect with yarn. I decided to have a go. It is still a work in progress, butt here is what I have done so far. In my head, it is called ‘The Last Ray'”.

Kevin Clarkson

“I had not heard of Brian Rutenberg and the first impression was ‘Wow! Very powerful!’ So I spent quite a bit of time ‘deconstructing’ his technique. The apparent abstract nature is, of course, in reality highly stylised landscapes. If you put aside the idiosyncratic drawing style they are quite simple compositions. The cleverness for me is the use of colour; he has substituted primary or secondary colours for tone on most of the pieces, enhancing the abstract qualities. The texture and randomness is the product of palette knife work – that said, given the size of the canvases, it was more likely a large trowel!

I must admit, as a figurative painter, once I’d analysed the HOW, for me, much of the work lost some of its WOW. It’s the kind of work I have come across in large corporate boardrooms (not that I have been in that many), designed to impress or intimidate. For my pieces I took the technique I had unpicked and tried a few landscapes of my own, with very mixed results. It is one thing to understand a process but quite another to create in that genre. A lot of my work is marine in subject, so for the first piece I took an image of reflections on water and upped the colour values and worked largely with a palette knife. I think you can still just about make out it is meant to be liquid. For the other piece, I chose a lake surrounded by trees and threw away the tonal values, replacing them with primary colour. I failed to match the stylisation of Rutenberg, but I think they are just about going in the right direction.”

kevinclarkson.co.uk / artfinder.com/kevin-clarkson / kevinclarksonart.blogspot.com

Kerfe Roig

“The colors immediately made me think of Monet, which made me think of the grids I did based on Monet’s work. This is a very intense way to look at art, and I learned a lot from it as I not only did some of Monet’s paintings, but an entire book of other artists for The Sketchbook Project. The subtleties of color are amazing when you look closely at them. Rutenberg clearly has an eye for color. You can see my work with Monet here and here, and my Sketchbook Project book, Art I Like, here.”

everywhere
falls apart
mind to eyes
expanding

falls apart
becomes its opposite
expanding
into stories

becomes its opposite
days into nights
into stories
the sun intersecting the moon

days into nights
future and past
the sun intersecting the moon
enlarging the horizon

future and past
the surprise of delight
enlarging the horizon
to leave is to arrive

the surprise of delight
mind to eyes
to leave is to arrive
everywhere

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

Marion Raper

“I really love Brian Rutenberg’s painting, with its wonderful explosive colours. My own attempt at an abstract was inspired by my recent (surprise) gliding experience, and the view of the fabulous patchwork of fields below me. I firstly made a rough sketch of my ideas and then took some prewashed pieces of crinkled cotton and stuck them onto A2 paper. After this I proceeded to add acrylics with a very large brush and just primary colours. All the while I tried to remember how it felt to skim 2000 feet up over the air currents. I then used a fine brush to add details of contours and rivers in contrast colours. The thing that I found most difficult was knowing when to stop! I mean, it’s not that easy on an ordinary illustration, but an abstract seems to have its own momentum. Well, I finally came in to land – so to speak. However, the painting as a whole doesn’t seem quite right. My other half says it needs a focal point and I fear he’s right. Ah well, here are the best bits.”

Francesca Maxwell

“This is glorious, what a great painting and a new discovery for me, thank you, Phill Hosking, an inspiration, and also a new addition to my list of abstract artists I use for my painting classes – particularly the abstract and colour courses, but also brilliant as an example for composition and depth. So this is one of my abstract paintings that deals with space, macrocosm and microcosm, more than rooted in the landscape, as I feel Brian Rutenberg’s are.” Ink on watercolour paper, 76×56 cm.

www.FBM.me.uk

Phil Cooper

“When I looked into Brian Rutenberg’s work, I was struck by the lush sensual paintwork, the bold abstraction, and the immersive scale. I was also intrigued by his limited range of subject matter, and how he explored a few subjects repeatedly, always managing to find new emotional responses. I’ve honed in on a particular landscape that I’m fascinated by; the shingle spit of Dungeness. I’ve made a few semi-abstracted images of the scrubby vegetation that colonises the shingle with Dungeness B nuclear power station looming up behind. I never tire of this place and I could explore the strange, wild landscape over and over. These images are made using the monoprint technique, with two monoprints digitally overlaid and edited to make the final image.”

instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com

Phil Gomm

“After the first big hit of colour, the next most immediate thing I got from Rutenberg’s painting was its three-dimensionality, that strong sense of folded planes and faceting, as if we’re stood on the floor of some Technicoloured canyon, staring off into the distance, or more precariously, standing with one foot on either side of a rainbowed crevasse, and looking down between our feet at the prismatic chasm below. This was a vista I could feel with my fingers and I found the desire to build some Low Dense-inspired ‘chunks’ irresistible. Fabricated quickly by folding cardboard and taping it into shape, and reaching once again for some tried-and-tested PVA goop, I whipped up some ‘Ruten-Bergs’ and then painted them up in a manner meant to emulate some of the characteristics of the painting. That done, I then pushed my Ruten-Bergs together in different configurations and photographed them in various different ways, under various different lights, until I was achieving some suitably painterly effects.”

Tom Beg

“Looking at the painting, I imagined that I was staring through the viewfinder of an inter-planetary rover on the surface of some dusty and rocky multi-coloured planet. With this planetary vision in mind, I explored the idea of creating computer generated ecosystems. Through multiple iterations and experimentation, it started to develop into models and images that seemed less about surface and into something more microscopic. Perhaps these could even be particles of paint magnified to impossible levels.”

twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg

Gary Thorne

“Rutenberg has me questioning how abstraction evolves from the memory of landscape. So I set up the challenge of memory of still life inspired by his enjoyment and use of colour. Yet I could not break free from the fruit form so, more work ahead on that problem. How jealous I am of his mixing 500ml of richly colour-saturated oil to then apply it with his palm across the canvas!” 25x25cm oil on prepared paper.

linkedin.com/in/gary-thorne

Phill Hosking

“This piece started life as a digital painting, in the style of Rutenberg’s paintings. The more I’ve gotten into his work over the last few years, and as I’ve listened to him speak about his work and process, I’ve absorbed a lot of his wisdom and theory. Painting in Photoshop, from some recent photos I took on holiday in Somerset, I realised that without all the elements of thick oil paint, walnut oil, textured canvas and the monumental scale, this just wasn’t going to cut it. The sense of depth and light depicted in Brian’s work always astounds me, so I took the idea of his interplay of horizontals and verticals into ZBrush. I used the original digital painting to create the colour on the 3D. I made a rough approximation of the artist himself, just as a homage to a bit of a hero of mine, then created a tangle of intersecting forms. I encased this in a glass box to contain this in a 3D space, something the artist conveys so well on his canvases. A departure from my comfort zone on this one, another lesson learned from Rutenberg himself.”

instagram.com/eclecto2d / linkedin.com/in/phill-hosking / phillhosking.wordpress.com

What I love about the Kick-About is the way in which the different prompts send us all haring off in such unexpected directions and producing work we can’t predict. I suspect our newest prompt, courtesy of Tom Beg, will prove no exception: behold Werner Herzog’s celebrated dancing chicken from his 1977 film, Stroszek…

The Kick-About #22 ‘Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez’

After the deep intellectual waters of our last Kick-About together, we find ourselves submerged once more, joining Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez in his submersible. It’s a bit of squeeze in there, not least because I’m happy to welcome two new kick-abouters into the mix: Jackie Hagan and Brian Noble. All aboard!

Phil Hosking

“This image started with a really quick thumbnail sketch that still contains the looseness in its final form, which I like. Thinking about Von Ransonnet-Villez’s contraption, and marvelling at the man’s ingenuity and dedication to explore for sake of art and science, I began to think about the experience of the sea life that was seeing this bizarre contraption in their domain. I switched the view to something where I could set the scene from a fish’s perspective, allowing me to look up into the submersible, and in the process give a bit of drama to what must have been quite a long and claustrophobic experience. Bit of artistic license used on the design of the submersible. I’m sure Eugen wouldn’t have minded.”

instagram.com/eclecto2d / linkedin.com/in/phill-hosking

Jackie Hagan

“I was struck by the delicately populated reefs depicted in Ransonnet-Villez’s underwater paintings, which led me to wonder what he would have made of the shocking fact that, according to MEPA, 90% of the corals around Sri Lanka are now dead. What would he see if he had been able to submerge in his diving bell today? A sea full of plastic? Or maybe not, micro-plastics being the invisible killers that they are…

Falling into the rabbit-hole of research (yes, I should be working!) led me to discover scientists have set up an EU funded project called GoJelly, (https://gojelly.eu/about/) which is exploring scooping out blooms of jellyfish and using their slime to trap and remove micro-plastics from the oceans. But what would happen if the jellyfish fought back? Prehistoric creatures digesting the most modern of pollutants… And so I present, Scyphozoa plasticus.”

Francesca Maxwell

“I didn’t know about Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez artworks and I am glad of the introduction. Most of my work is about the sea in one way or another. I was born by it and miss not been near it, so I paint it instead. Here is a bit of fused glass I did of a jellyfish. Wonderful, translucent and clever things they are.” Fused Glass 30 x 28 cm.

www.FBM.me.uk

Phil Cooper

“I didn’t know the artist Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez before I read the kick about prompt, but a couple of clicks later and I was fully immersed in his underwater world and liking it a lot. The images conjure the excitement of exploration, and stepping out of the comfort of the shallows into stranger worlds.

The underwater paintings brought back memories of summer swimming for me. When the weather warms up we spend many afternoons in the lakes in and around Berlin. At the very best spots you can swim through crystal clear turquoise water amongst the water lilies with dragon flies buzzing about your head. It’s really lovely. A while back, I made a couple of studies based on my impressions of those swims and they seemed to fit the bill this week.”

instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com

Jan Blake

“Here are my thoughts on Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez and his underwater paintings. I love the murky otherworldliness. My only experience of looking under the water was a trip to Malta many years ago. Crystal clear water and no murkiness or pollution at that time. It was magical, and I don’t know why I’ve not taken up snorkling again. It seemed a natural progression from the last Kick-About, that I retrace the possible journey of my Sea-heart pod back to where it may have started in the Gulf of Mexico. There were such a lot of possibilities, from barren wastes left by oil spills, to underwater forests left from the ice-age, and then the most extraordinary plants that live on the coral reefs. This is one of the richest areas for unusual sea life anywhere in the world. So what a trip my pod had! Here are the first two images of the Gulf of Mexico, followed by imaginary images through the windows of a submarine, as a bit of an after thought / diversion / intrigue?” .

‘Getting going out of the swamps into choppy waters over the sunken forests.’

‘A slower rest in the shallows or the coral reef.’

‘A chance glimpse through the submarine port holes of my imagination.’

janblake.co.uk

Tom Beg

“Walking around the backstreets of Yokohama feels a lot like being underwater sometimes, so here it is imagined as a sunken, murky city with concrete coral reefs and caverns.”

twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg

Phil Gomm

“My original inspiration for tackling the latest Kick-About prompt was imagining what it must have been like for Ransonnet-Villez inside his submersible, looking through the thick greenish glass of his porthole and out onto the ocean floor. I guess I was more interested in thinking about the distortions produced by looking through the glass, and how they’d add a certain otherworldliness to the painter’s underwater subjects. There is a mundane secret at work behind the resulting photographs – a simple set-up reframing a collection of household objects and pushing them towards a sort of bubbly and aquatic abstraction. Producing these photographs proved immensely addictive – play by any other name.”

Brian Noble

“I started fly fishing 35 years ago, although it wasn’t until I started sketching and painting fish that I began to observe both the above water landscape and the underwater landscape while spending time on the water fishing. I soon discovered that examining the natural landscape of creeks and rivers caused me to pause and reflect upon the environment I had found myself so immersed in. Studying rocks, trees, water and fish became equally important as fishing itself. I found myself considering how objects appear both above and below the water, and how reflected light is such an important factor in how these objects are presented. I have recently started using an underwater camera to capture some of these images to use as a resource for my sketches. Personally, I find fish to be an intriguing life form – how they hold still, swim, secure food and seek shelter. The natural curves of a fish bring a sense of calm and beauty that I appreciate and strive to recreate in sketches and watercolor paintings.”

flowingwaterart.ca / linkedin.com/in/brian-noble

Marion Raper

“I had a fun time with this and decided to do an underwater collage.To start with I tried a bit of marbelling on Yupo paper and using acrylic inks. It turned out so beautifully, I couldn’t bear to cut it up! It reminds me of the shapes and shadows on the ocean floor. Next I tried making marks with water colours, using things such as bubble wrap and sponges, and scratching with a palette knife. This was also too special to chop up, even though it would be great as fish skin or scales. Lastly, I sketched a few fish and spent a very pleasant afternoon cutting and sticking my scene together. Can you spot the pepperoni pizza fish?”

Kevin Clarkson

“Not having come across Eugen Ransonnet-Villez before I was captivated by his underwater drawings and paintings, particularly since the diving bell was a new and quite dangerous piece of tech in the 1860s. He manages to capture the submarine luminescent qualities of light in his colours and textures in very convincing studies. The only quality I share with him is the desire to capture images of the sea, in my case above it, rather than under it. My association and motivation to paint the sea became the jumping off point for the Kick-about 22.

I grew up 60 miles from the sea in Yorkshire, and must have been close to 10 before I saw and splashed in it. My first interests were in the craft that sailed on it rather than the sea itself. I soon realised a drawing or painting of a boat looked less than convincing without being placed in a realistic sea, and from there my interest grew. A fascination developed with the fact the sea could change completely in the blink of an eye, colour, light and shape being constantly in motion. I was overwhelmed by the technical challenge, but as the years went by a number of “How to paint the sea” books arrived on the bookshelf. However, the process looked complicated, so the books remained on the shelf.

One day, whilst killing time between jobs, I pulled down a book that fell open at the beginning of an exercise. Almost without thinking I repeated the exercise – it worked, not a great piece of art, but it looked like the sea! I was hooked and devoured all the other exercises. It would be wrong to give the impression that technique is all you need, but it gives confidence, and if done in conjunction with careful study of the real thing, turns mere technique into art. Once bitten you never stop learning.

My images for the “Kick-About”are from a recent exercise I set with an art club I am a member of, to demonstrate technique and capture the swell of the open sea. It is certainly not the only way to paint the ocean, but I do get fairly consistent results and I have pdfs of the original exercises should anyone be interested.”

kevinclarkson.co.uk /artfinder.com/kevin-clarkson / kevinclarksonart.blogspot.com

Charly Skilling

James Randall

“I had high hopes for a bubbled person image but felt time and concept were getting away from me, so I switched direction to bits and pieces washed up on a beach – the original photo I had in the back of my mind from 2010 had always appealed. Thanks again for a bit of kick-about fun.”

Vanessa Clegg

“This got me thinking about the state of the sea in 2021 and how poor old Eugen would be turning in his grave at the changes since he sat in his box, scooting along the sand surrounded by as yet, untouched beauty. If he were to repeat this now with the addition of temperature rise (bleached coral), pollution from plastic and chemical dumping, agricultural run off and change in salinity from ice melt, he would be sadly disappointed.

I’ve approached this simply, addressing plastic and coral die off. Tempting, however, to tie Eugen in with The Flintstones, as his submersible reminded me of Barney Rubble using his feet through the car floor to ‘motor’ himself along!”

22” X 22” Charcoal on Fabriano paper. “Empty Shell with Ear Buds.”

20” X 15” “Dead Sea”. Photo collage with bleached coral.

vanessaclegg.co.uk

Kerfe Roig

“I’ve been futzing around with this all week, inspired by Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez, and the earthweal challenge natural forces. The painting above, my first attempt, probably has 20 painted layers. Watercolor looks very different wet, and each time it dried I was dissatisfied with the result. Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez was an Austrian artist who designed a diving bell so he could paint the landscape that existed under the sea. This was in the 1860s – both crazy and fantastic. His paintings have an eerie green magic, which was what I was trying to capture, because what is the sea but the most elemental of magic? Like Ransonnet-Villez, I wished to immerse myself inside of it. Being at the moment concrete-bound, I could only try to conjure it with words and paint.”

tides entombed in unchanging light,
reflecting the absent sky,
shimmering with intangibles–
an ancient web woven with stories–

the stilled sea contemplates its origins–
heavy with the cadences of gravity
boundaried by the afterlife–
tides entombed in unchanging light–

surrounded and asunder, astonishment
becomes tinged with enigmatic clarity–
holding particles of stars as if enshrined,
reflecting the absent sky–

the fulcrum rests inside the echo
of what endures, arising
from an aqueous womb
shimmering with intangibles–

the circle continues, horizonless,
quivering in confluence–
who can refuse the voices of the sea?–
an ancient web woven with stories–

kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com

Graeme Daly

“When I returned to the forest this past winter, I happened to come upon a small trench-like lagoon deep within the caverns of the forest, where the snow above was melting and gently plopping into the lagoon. The lagoon was shallow, meaning I could see the dirt, grasses and flowers filtering about in the water with the slightest movement. The glare of the crispy winter sun, projecting shadows of the spruces and firs, lit certain areas of the undergrowth in vibrant red. The trees and shrubbery reflected upon the water caused a mandala of colours to be refracted and ripple, as snow drops fell from above. Watching this was one of most pleasurable tranquil experiences I have ever had. I sat and watched this private show for a long time, and felt as though time had frozen – along with my hands. I pressed record on my camera, although I didn’t have a tripod, which meant some shakiness. It was an absolute pleasure to edit this film, and with it I have attempted to capture that feeling of complete tranquility. The song by Kris Keogh, entitled “We Were Gone Further Than Forever”, transported me back to that tranquil meditative state again, with sections feeling like time moving, flowing and reversing.”

@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog

Of our brand new Kick-About prompt, it could be argued we’ve been producing work suitable for the shelves of the ‘Museum Wormianum’ week-after-week. Nonetheless, I cannot wait to see what curiosities we might produce with the Ole Worm’s collection of oddities as today’s jumping-off point.