SHEFFIELD ARTISTS OPEN STUDIOS AND EASTER FLOWERS

Gosh, I can’t believe it’s the Sheffield Artists Open Studios event starting at the weekend. It’s all very chaotic and last minute as usual, but I’m sure it will sort itself out.

Not much time to write at the moment so I’ll post these sunny flower paintings I did over the Easter period. I was inspired by walking through Weston Park in Sheffield and seeing all the colourful new flowers. I’ll be showing them at the weekend along with around 20 new paintings, some big, some small. Something for everyone!

 
The weather has been glorious lately, apart from a crazy hour the other afternoon when it was more like Christmas. I’ve never seen such big hailstones and the roads became mini rivers. This was the view from my eyrie, dreaming of a white Easter!

Anyway, back to the preparations for the weekend. I’m staging my event at Sheffield Cathedral this year so hopefully there’ll be a good turnout of visitors, especially if the weather stays nice.

Check out the details at the following address:

http://www.openupsheffield.co.uk/artists/mark-h-wilson.htm

SPRING CLEANING, NEW PAINTINGS & MY FIRST EVENT OF THE YEAR

Well, the house is ready for a spring clean. Wifey has started today and I will start on the top floor studio rooms as soon as I’ve got my latest paintings mounted and framed ready for my first event of the year. Honest, I will, whenever I get a spare minute! 

My first event of the year is the Curbar Art Show in Derbyshire. It’s being held at the local school and helps to raise funds for the school.

I first started taking part in these village shows in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire in the mid 90’s when I began to concentrate on landscape painting. They are held in churches, church halls, schools, community centres etc and I used to do as many as possible. I did really well at some selling all, or nearly all, my work. Some were a dead loss so I ruled them out and concentrated on the better ones. It was a big help to get me known in the region and also helped out the organisations and charities involved. 

I will be showing six pieces including these two new paintings of mine at Curbar in the Peak District on the weekend 9/10 April 2011, so get yourself along, have a cup of tea and a piece of cake and maybe pick up a bargain work of art.

Anyhow, back to the spring cleaning!!

 

 

City Storm Sky

First Light City Sunrise

SPRING, BLOSSOM, FLORAL PAINTINGS & THE SPACE-INBETWEEN

Well, the weather has been great recently with the advent of Spring, my favourite time of the year. I love the blossom, the emerging buds and the longer, brighter days. I feel like I’ve emerged, too, from a winter hibernation. Wifey loves the winter and the dark nights but for me it’s a bit glum, especially after the Christmas and the New Year festivities.

Anyway, seeing all this new colour has got me inspired to get going on some new floral work.

 SPRING 40cmx30cm

I’ve always loved using flowers as a starting point for a painting. There are so many colours to choose from, so many shapes. I don’t set out to depict a flower in a botanically correct way, after all I’m an artist, not a scientist. I choose my flowers, setting them up in an untraditional arrangement and start with loose, quickly done studies using diluted acrylic and a selection of brushes, palette knives, sponges, bits of card, kitchen roll, anything that’s lying around really. I sometimes put spotlights on the arrangement to cast shadows on the white background, what I call the space in-between. Working like this allows me to try different compositions, colour combinations and techniques and because I use paper I can throw them away if they don’t work. I usually work on about 10 of these at a time moving from one to another in rotation. At the end I might get 5 or 6 that I think are worth saving and mounting.

I don’t really class these paintings as studies. Quite often they contain a freshness and spontaneity that larger, more ‘worked’ paintings can lose.

Here are three examples to finish with.

ON GOLD 40cmx30cm

  

BUNCH 40cmx30cm

ARRANGEMENT 40cmx30cm 

A BIT ‘STUCK’, A BIG TREE PAINTING & MY BIGGEST CANVAS EVER

I’m currently going through a bit of a ‘stuck’ phase where I can’t get down on canvas what I envisage in my mind. I always want to move on and make better paintings. I’m never really satisfied with doing something that I’ve done before. Maybe I try too hard and want to achieve too much too quickly. At times like this, I find that I have to keep going, to work through it, and more often than not it does result in something positive, a new discovery, a stepping-stone to who knows where. Persistence is the key. As my favourite poet George Mackay Brown wrote: “There’s no retreat. The path mounts higher and every summit fringed with fire.”

However, here is a painting I did finish last week. It’s the latest of my woodland derived paintings and my biggest so far. I like the texture on the trees, the vertical rhythm, and the fluidity of the paint. Someone has commented on its Klimt-esque qualities which pleases me. Klimt is an artist whose work I’ve always been drawn to, maybe TOO decorative at times, but I do love his dream-like, abstracted trees and landscape paintings.

Mark H Wilson

Tangle Wood 2

Acrylic on Box Canvas

100cm x 70cm

Gustav Klimt

Beech Forest

Talking of large paintings, my biggest painting on canvas EVER measured 8’x4’ which I did at Art College many, many years ago. It was a big blue abstract based on the lettering and images from discarded canned food labels. Abstract Expressionism was all the rage at our college at the time, but I was a big fan of Pop Art, so I sort of combined the two.  I remember it got accepted for the Open Art exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull and I recall getting a few disparaging looks and comments carrying it through the streets of Hull for selection day.

Finally, to celebrate the arrival of Spring on this lovely sunny day, I’ll finish with this painting of mine called “Spring”.

A Popular Painting and Watercolour Competitions

Today, this painting of Whitby harbour made it to the top spot in the Art Web’s Popular Artwork, which is pretty good considering there are over 4000 works listed. It’s taken 2 years to get there. The painting was actually bought last year by one of my most valued customers in Japan, which is quite poignant considering the terrible events in Japan today. Sometimes, it’s hard to know what to say really.

 

Evening Harbour, Whitby Lights

60cm x 30cm on Box Canvas

http://www.artweb.com/artwork/popular

There are a couple of watercolour competitions coming up in the next few months that I intend to enter. It’s a medium that I haven’t used for a while. I prefer the physical, tactile and textural approach more suited to using oils and acrylics. I’ve always found watercolours too delicate and precise for my liking and have never been able to achieve the rich vivid colour I want. However, I came across this Howard Hodgkin watercolour the other day. I love his bold, deep, intense use of colour. Can’t wait to have a go myself now after seeing this. Where’s my watercolour set?

A Storm

Howard Hodgkin

1977

Well, a couple more hours of painting before the daylight goes, then I’ll see if Wifey wants an aperitif and a game of Scrabble. I’m on a good run at the moment, 14 games undefeated.

Mark H’s latest painting - a Contemporary Woodland

My latest painting featuring muted greys and loads of texture.

Tangle Wood 

60cm x 60cm on box canvas 

I finished this woodland painting yesterday. I’ve been working on it for a while, not being happy with it, but yesterday I looked at it and thought ‘that’s it, I can’t go any further with it now, it’s finished’. Every so often does a moment come along, and to me this painting is such a moment, when something has happened that I can’t explain, but is somehow right. Don't ask me how it's done! 

Keep painting and the magic will come.

A Sheffield Painting for Charity and my Magic Brush

Here is the painting that I am donating to the Red Cross charity art event to be held in the fantastic Winter Gardens here in Sheffield in June. It’s a winter sunset scene and features the Ranmoor Inn pub, which always looks so welcoming. I’ve done a few versions of this scene as I find the viewpoint and perspective interesting and challenging with the two roads on either side of the pub diverging away from the focal point. 

 

Also today, I’m showing you my ‘magic’ brush. This is the last of a set of hand crafted sign writing brushes that I was given when I did the coachwork painting and sign writing on the restoration of Hull tram 132. 

As you can see, it is well on its last legs but somehow seems to keep going. It’s absolutely fantastic for doing trees and thin sweeping brushstrokes. I used it for the trees on the painting above. I wish I still had the rest of these amazing brushes but they either got nicked or lost during a house move.

Anyhow, check my website for the Red Cross event dates and you can see Hull tram 132 in the Streetlife Museum in Hull.