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GLOBAL WARMING series - POLAR BEAR PERIL

On thin ice due to global warming

Casein Collage - a print made from pouring Casein (milk-based ink) on to glass, over which is placed the paper. The results of varying textures depends on how thick or thin the consistency of the ink. Manipulation of both paper and ink and colours can achieve interesting abstract images, even before collage is considered as a way of creating a significant form.

THE BARTERED BRIDE

Framed: 30" x 40"

I called this water colour of an iris The Bartered Bride - I am sure someone will come up with a Freudian interpretation for this conjunction of ideas! Including the fact that it was photographed, beautifully framed by my daughter, hanging over the fireplace, unavoidably reflecting the ceiling fixture.

Of course, Sarah's friends immediately think she owns a Georgia O'Keeffe painting! However, during my water colour painting phase, I was not consciously thinking O'Keeffe. At the time, I was taking a course in water colour painting, offered by an Asian artist, who insisted that we first handle the flowers themselves to feel and understand their structure.

So, the 'still life' consisted of a bunch of much handled cut flowers spread on a table - leaving us to create the still life. I could not keep an expressive form from the final pieces, as seen in The Dandelion. And, being a former tabloid reporter, the habit of provocative titling remains an irresistible addiction.

When a teenager, I was a self-taught water colour painter, and was often called upon to make posters for shopkeepers.

GLOBAL WARMING series - The Dandelion

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The dandelion will grow anywhere and reflect whatever is in the soil that nurtures it. It grows from early spring to late autumn. Drastic measures are inspired to curb its proliferation,

a plant-type monster that swarms gardens, fields and paving with its flying seed-vessels

At one point I saw it as a metaphor as

a Dandy Lion because of its immense flamboyant nature! Then I read that this plant gets its name from the shape of its leaves. They look like a blunt arrow head with a white line running up the centre. The edges are cut up into huge teeth which are said to resemble the teeth of a lion. Hence, Dandelion.

or, as the Sun and Moon: the large yellow flower-heads made up of a great many separate little flower tubes, and the ball of starry down said to be one of the most beautiful things in the flower world.

This watercolour (Size: 30" x 40" framed) came about because I was thinking about the effects of Global Warming and how nature is forever transforming itself - adapting not only to what mankind puts into the soil, but also to evolutionary changes that occur as the world turns.

NUDES IN WOOD (Series #2)

Size: 23" x 32"

Paper: Rice

This print, made from driftwood, already shaped on one side to suggest a torso, was executed on a Harold Wright press bed size of 30" x 48". The rice paper was folded to include a second shape to mirror the original shape on the right hand side. Similarly, for the left hand side, the shape was reversed (exagerated) to complete the torso illusion.

GLOBAL WARMING

IS A NATURAL EVENT

NOT MAN-MADE

But there are man-made pollutants that effect life and plants.

Two different issues.

Media: watercolour

GONE FOR A FEW DAYS. BACK SOON.

BLACK-EYED SUSAN

Only this one is red-eyed, with black eye-lashes!
(A comment on the changing environment)

Media: Watercolour