Open Studio: Rainforest and Reef

July 7, 2017July 7, 2017 | Vandy

Open Studio Rainforest Reef! Its all about to happen. I’m heading home with a collection of watercolours and a few experimental abstract acrylics in my suitcase.

I’ve had the most amazing two months of new places, new experiences and new paintings. We’ve travelled through Bangkok, Siem Reap in Cambodia, Sydney, Queensland (Mission Beach and Airlie Beach), Melbourne and finally Singapore. I am sitting beside the swimming pool in the heat on the 6th floor of our hotel in Singapore as I write. This evening we board our flight back home and I am simultaneously sad that my trip is at an end, and pleased to be going home. I can’t wait to see my sons and sleep in my own bed. I am itching to get back into my studio and get started preparing for next weekend’s open studio.

Open Studio Rainforest Reef: What will be on the walls

One of the best aspects of watercolour is their portability. Paintings dry fast and you don’t need a lot of kit (although I must admit I brought along far more than I needed).

Before I left, I planned to paint a series of 20 x 20 watercolours for an open studio. Paper was cut to size, frames were sourced and set up ready to be ordered for my return. I wasn’t sure how many paintings I would manage to do so I couldn’t pre-order.

Once I got to Queensland, I was entranced by the rainforest most of all. I’ve always loved trees. Ever since I was able to climb my first tree I have enjoyed their sheer scale, their majesty and their individuality. So, right now, there are more rainforest paintings than reef paintings – although I do have a lot more ideas for reef paintings that will no doubt emerge in time.

My surprise discover on this trip was the fabulous art centre at Mission Beach. Where I was able to join a workshop on Abstracting the Landscape with Australian artist, Glenda Charles. The weekend was inspiring, terrifying and energising. I will have the two works I completed on that weekend available for Open Studio visitors to see. If you can’t make it to the Open Studio, I will be posting more about each of those two paintings when I have had time to scan all my work.

Thank you for following my creative journey. I really appreciate the fact that you’re still reading after all this time. If you know anyone else who might enjoy my ramblings, please feel free to share this blog. I would be very grateful.

More back in the UK.

Watercolour Sketchbook in Digital Form for my ArtAusTrailasia Project

June 21, 2017June 21, 2017 | Vandy

There’s an emerging digital watercolour sketchbook of my current trip. I love travelling and try to go somewhere every year – it inspires my painting. Right now I’m a long way from home, travelling in Queensland, Australia exploring Rainforests and Reefs.

Watercolour - Rainforest in the Rain — Rainforest in the Rain. Watercolour 20 x 20cm

We came via Bangkok and Siem Reap in Cambodia because there were things to be seen along the way. Travel is such a cornerstone of my painting, I decided to make the most of it on this trip and create a digital journal along the way. Rather than keeping a daily sketchbook, I’ve painted an A5 sketch each day. Each one is then photographed it so I have a record and finally, left it in a public place for someone to find and keep.

So far I’ve painted 43 and I hope to make it a total of 60 before I get home. Each image gets put on Instagram and in a Facebook album with the tag #ArtAustTrailAsia.

This is my digital sketchbook.

So far the watercolour sketches have been well received. I mainly leave the paintings without telling anyone, and let them be discovered later. Often I’ve been on a walk, leaving the painting on a table at the beginning of the trail. Its always gone by the time I get back. A few people have left messages on Facebook or Instagram to say they’ve got a painting and to let me know where the painting landed up.

The last few days I’ve been painting on a sailing boat with 22 other passengers. By the last day people were watching the emerging watercolour and asking if they could have the next painting. This was very good for my plein air painting. I’m normally too self conscious to paint in public and hate being watched as I work. But this trip has helped enormously and I’ve become much more relaxed about painting when other people are around me. What’s helped you paint in public? It can be a daunting prospect.

And a Watercolour Sketchbook to take home

Watercolour Sketchbook - Wongaling Garden Tree

Watercolour Sketchbook 2 - Trees on Whitsunday Island. The leaves begin to emerge again

Watercolour Sketchbook 3 - Storm damage on Whitsunday Island

Watercolour Sketchbook 5 - Sailing past the rocks. Trees perched on top.

They haven’t all been given away. There will be paintings coming home with me too. I have put down a few pieces in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook, and have started a series of 20 x 20 watercolours which will be available for sale when I get back home. There will be some bigger works too. I am loving painting the rainforests and the reefs of Australia so much that I’ll be holding an Open Studio weekend in July when I get back home. If you’re in the Cambridge area and would like to come along, sign up for my newsletter in the box on the right hand side of my blog for information about dates and times. News of my Rainforest and Reef Open Studio will be coming soon. Watch this space (or my newsletter)

And now for some non watercolour sketchbook news:

I’m thrilled to have had two paintings accepted for the Babylon Arts Summer Open Exhibition. Rhododendrons in the Garden and Alliums in the Garden will be on show at the Babylon Gallery in Ely. The exhibition runs from July 29th to August 28th and will feature the work of 40 artists. The gallery is a lovely venue right on the river bank and its well worth a day out of boat watching, art viewing and some good places to eat lunch.

Rhododendrons in the Garden. Watercolour by Vandy Massey

Alliums in the Garden. Watercolour by Vandy Massey

Just over a year ago I was honoured to be offered (and accept) the role of Chair of the Society of East Anglian Watercolourists. The society has for many years benefitted in various ways from links with the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. It’s been an exciting year of working with a committee of extremely talented artists to bring in some new initiatives for the society’s 70 members. In the context of my art life this is what has been keeping me busy. I have two years left of my term so expect blogging to be sporadic.

One other piece of Society of East Anglian Watercolourists news: The annual Selected Exhibition which is due to take place from 30 August to 17 September this year is now open for submissions from non-members. If you’re an East Anglian Watercolourists – consider submitting some work for our exhibition. More information on this at www.seaw.co.uk

Society of East Anglian Watercolourists Selected Exhibition

August 14, 2016September 8, 2016 | Vandy

Open Studio Give Away

July 14, 2016July 14, 2016 | Vandy

This is my third year of holding an Open Studio. Joining over 300 other Cambridge Open Studios artists is a highlight of my year. I love all of it – the planning, the build up and most of all, meeting interesting people who come for a browse.

This year, to celebrate my 2016 Open Studio I’ve decided to do a giveaway

The winner of the draw will receive this limited edition signed and numbered giclee print of Poppies in the Sunlight. This print comes mounted and ready to put into a 12 x 16 inch frame.

There are plenty of opportunities to get your name in the draw (see below):

The draw will take place at 6pm on Sunday 24th July.

Your name goes in the draw every time you do one of the following:

Visit my Open Studio and put your name in the box. I will be open from 11am to 6pm on the 16th, 17th, 23rd and 24th July.
Sign up for my email newsletter. (I only do 3 or 4 newsletters a year).
Like my Facebook page
Share the Facebook post at the top of my page (you will need make sure the privacy setting on the post is ‘public’ so that I can see the share and add your name to the draw)
Sign up to receive my blog by email
Follow me on Instagram and pop a comment into the post with about this draw on my feed.

That’s 6 opportunities to get your name in the draw. You could have 6 chances of winning this print.

(About this painting: Every year a few of my works seem to be the zeitgeist pieces of the year. This is one for 2016. It was painted last summer and was then used as the poster image for the Spring Exhibition of the Society of East Anglian Watercolourists Spring Exhibition. The original painting was the first painting to sell at the exhibition. For me this painting represent exuberence and zest for life: a joyful painting)

What’s on show at my Open Studio 2016

This year I have

90 of my Running With Brushes paintings on display.
A number of new watercolours, some of which stem from my South African travels, and some from a recent trip to the island of Paxos.
I’ve invested in a top quality scanner and giclee printer so this year will also be showing a range of signed limited edition prints mounted and ready to be framed for the wall.
Seven new greeting cards designs join the collection of evergreen favourites.

I am aware that time is precious and I so value the effort people make to come and see my open studio. My working studio, untidy as it is when I paint, will be open for visitors to look around and I’ll be there to answer any questions and chat about my inspiration and my approach to painting.

And if the weather is kind to us, we’ll even be able to have our tea and cake in the garden. The next two weekends are looking to be fabulous!

Watercolour sketch cards

March 6, 2016 | Vandy

I’m playing catch up with my little watercolour sketch cards this week. I ran out of time to write a post last week for a number of reasons, but mainly because I am organising an exciting Running With Brushes exhibition.

I have the support of nine other fabulous artists in Cambridge who will be exhibiting with me – not to mention the 30 other artists who have so generously donated works to Running With Brushes. The website is up, the artists are ready and now we start with spreading the word. So if you’re in the Cambridge area and you fancy a grand night out with live music, a fantastic art exhibition, the chance to meet some exceptional artists, and to take home one of the gorgeous little Running With Brushes watercolours – please consider buying a ticket and spreading the word. (Early warning – you may hear a bit more about this event from me as the event unfolds)

So now you know why I didn’t post last week, here’s a selection of the watercolour sketch collection that came off my brushes.

Watercolour Sketch list

Nightingale song inspired this sketch. On one of my London work days I heard my first nightingale. Sound waves in the dusk came to mind.

Creating order from chaos. I’m going through an exercise of organising my palettes. I’ll blog about this some time in the future – I’ve started working through my paints to find the single pigment transparent colours. More on this later.

The strelizia in the office produced a single flower/. I loved the dramatic shapes of the spikey petals. They called for a layered abstract.

Sitting in the Zurich airport I thought about what defines Switzerland. The essence of the Switzerland I saw last week was many shades of grey, blue skies, mountain peaks and a splash of red.

Taking off – I challenged myself to paint one of these on the plane. This was painted at 38000 feet above the earth.

Energy pods. Shiny gold cones of wake-up boost. They’re not very politically correct these days.

Back to the studio now for a bigger piece.

SEAW Selected Exhibition 2015

October 8, 2015 | Vandy

The annual SEAW selected exhibition started on Monday 5th October with a preview and prize giving event. 182 paintings were delivered to the Wymondham Art Centre on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning by 38 hopeful artists. By Monday afternoon, judges Olwen Jones RWS, Julia Sorrell RI and Ann Roberts of WAC had selected 82 paintings for the exhibition and the hanging committee was hard at work putting them on display.

SEAW Selected Exhibition – 2015 Prize winners

SEAW Selected Exhibition 2015 - winning paintings — The winning paintings – Photography by Janet Hathiramani

The judges awarded six prizes from these paintings:

Mary, by John Glover was awarded the RWS Presidents Award and cup, and will be hung at the RWS Open Exhibition at the Bankside Gallery in 2016.

Other prizes were awarded to Tony White, Ruth McCabe, Alan Noyes, Gilly Marklew (who was one of my first watercolour tutors) and finally, to my painting, The Amphitheatre. I was over the moon to have received this endorsement. Its a first for me and I’m deeply honoured to have my painting hung on the same wall as such a talented and experienced group of watercolourists.

The Exhibition is on until October 18th.

Cambridge Open Studios and the Art Safari

July 5, 2015July 5, 2015 | Vandy

There’s a bit of a buzz in the house at the moment. We’re getting ready for Cambridge Open Studios in a fortnight.

I had the pleasure of going to see the studios of two other artists yesterday, both are experienced artists and have strong styles. They have very different styles of Open Studios and I was impressed by them both for different reasons. Jo Tunmer and Claire Marie Wood inspired me in different ways which was fabulous when faced with a weekend of framing, and organising to get ready. And it was lovely to have a chance to visit a couple of other studios. So often its not possible if your studio is open on the same weekends.

After a couple of days of working on the preparations, we’re not quite there yet, but we’re making progress. The framing is done:

Cambridge Open Studios preparation — All framed up and waiting for hanging

My Running With Brushes will be on display providing some exposure for the project. I wish I could display the whole collection, but even without being able to show the works of other artists, it should raise awareness.

Cambridge Open Studios display — My Running With Brushes paintings on display

Cambridge Open Studios in Whittlesford

We’re having an Art Safari in the village to make Whittlesford a good destination for Cambridge Open Studios visitors. With 4 artists works on display within a 5 minute walk, visitors will have plenty to see. It’s taken a bit of organising – firstly to make sure we could all be open on the same days, then to arrange our preview evening for the same time and date. Finally, we got the marvellous Lori Bentley to design our map which will be available at all studios and has gone out in 400 guidebooks around the area.

Between the four artists taking part, many mediums will be on display: watercolour, pastel, oil, acrylic and collage. The range is rich and the colours vibrant.

If you’re in the area, pop in for a coffee and say hello.

Watercolour Plans and Explorations

January 19, 2015 | Vandy

This week has been one of watercolour plans and some explorations.

Watercolour plan 1 : Open Studios

Watercolour plan 1: The start of the week brought paperwork for Open Studios – and the requirement to make some commitments to painting fresh work and exhibiting. I’ve decided to do both Saffron Walden Open studios at the end of April and beginning of May, and Cambridge Open Studios in July. More on these closer to the time.

Watercolour plan 2 : Artfinder

Watercolour plan 2: I took a decision to do a blitz sale on Artfinder to make space for new works in preparation for these exhibitions. This has proved quite successful so far and 5 paintings went over the past few days. It’s often quite difficult to see a painting go – we become attached to them somehow. But I’m excited about developing new lines of work this year and this will spur me on to get my brushes going.

Watercolour Exploration 1: Wash a Week Challenge

This week’s post explores Daniel Smith’s Lunar Blue. Here’s a little abstract treescape painting I did using only this colour. This will go up on the Running With Brushes site when I have time to post it there. (Life is overtaking me a bit at the moment.)

Watercolour exploration - wash a week entry — Wash a week – Week 4 – Lunar Blue

Following Last weeks Wash a Week post on Quinacridone Gold and Quinacridone Violet, I was asked how similar the gold is to Indian Yellow. I happen to have a tube of Indian Yellow I hadn’t yet tried. Perfect excuse to have a go so here’s the little colour swatch I did to see the difference. Separately, they do look quite similar because they are both strong colours. Put them together and you can see the difference.

Watercolour Exploration 2: Abstracts

On Friday evening I went to the monthly meeting of the Saffron Walden Art Society to see a demonstration of Abstract painting by local artist Joyce Crabb. I’m increasingly interested in Abstract art, and I think probably lean towards semi-abstract myself in some of my looser work. I’m not sure I’ll get comfortable with pure abstract work – at least not for some while, if ever. But I will be experimenting a bit more on the fringes I suspect.

Watercolour Plans 3: Tidying up the studio

I’m a book junkie (and a colour junkie as I’ve said before). I have a fair collection of art books and magazines in my studio. When I set up the space for my painting I insisted on having a corner with a sofa and table, as well as a bookshelf, so that I could sit quietly and enjoy dipping into this exciting reference material and inspiration.

A year or so ago, I did a workshop in oil painting with Stephen Higton and decided to start doing a bit of work in other mediums, so I bought a large easel, amongst other things. Its fabulous to have it, but in a small studio, it was always a bit in the way. No matter which way I positioned it, the bookshelf was obscured and it became a mission to reach it. Result: books not read, or books and magazines stacked all over the sofa and any other free surface so I could get to them.

This weekend I had a brainwave about repositioning things and got stuck in to moving furniture before I got started on painting. The result:

Watercolour plan - after the tidy — Space to read!

Quinacridone watercolours

January 13, 2015January 13, 2015 | Vandy

My Daniels Smith quinacridone watercolours came out to play this weekend. Last weekend I explored the differences and synergies between Quinacridone Gold and Quinacridone Deep Gold. You can see my findings in the Wash a Week challenge.

The nectarines on the kitchen table seemed an ideal subject for the colours I was working with for the blog. Once opened, the smooth, juicy, translucent flesh contrasted temptingly with the many folds and hard edges of the stone in the centre.

Quinacridone Watercolours blending on the paper

The perennial challenge for watercolourists is resisting the urge to be too fussy. There’s always the temptation to add one more brushstroke, embellish with a bit more detail, change an edge or a shape.

In this painting, I aimed to avoid this challenge by completing the whole painting with one flat brush. Painting a rounded shape with smooth edges using a flat brush makes it very difficult – almost impossible to get too detailed.

Using quick, energetic brushstrokes, my aim was to simply capture the essence of the fruit. My focus was specifically on the smooth quality of the flesh, and the area of rosy colouring where the hard stone emerges from the body of the fruit.

The combination of the transparent, single pigment quinacridone watercolours, and resisting the urge to fiddle with the paint once it’s been laid down on the paper, leaves the colours clear and translucent in the painting.

I’ll be sharing more quinacridone colours in future Wash a Week posts.

In other news, I’m starting the planning process for my 2015 exhibitions and Open Studios. There are a few visits to London exhibitions and a watercolour festival for inspiration. And I’ll be creating the opportunity for UK watercolour artists to attend workshops with two exceptional artists from Moldova and France. More news on these later.

Exhibition at Windmill Art in Linton

September 5, 2014September 5, 2014 | Vandy

My next showing will be an exhibition at Windmill Art in Linton with Mark Judson.

Mark’s Mark Judson's ceramics will be on show at the Exhibition at Windmill Art in Linton ceramics are well known in South Cambridgeshire where he exhibited for many years while teaching and heading the art department at The Perse School. I recently posted a photo on Facebook of the pot I decided I just had to have after seeing a picture of it. It was far too big to mail so we took a long weekend trip to France to collect it. It now stands proudly in our lounge and is a frequent conversation piece because of the beautiful delicate colours in the glaze.

Mark’s work can usually only be seen at exhibitions in central France where he now lives. This is a rare opportunity to see them on show in the UK again.

I will be showing watercolours themed by my travel experiences. Every country has it’s own special atmosphere and I aim to capture some of this in my landscapes. These are the works that will be on show in October.

Today I leave for my latest trip – a painting week on Belle Ile, France. I’ve been sailing in this part of the world before and some of the sights and sensations of Island life are bound to make their way into the exhibition at Windmill Art. There will be some paintings to see that are ‘hot off the easel’.

About the Exhibition at Windmill Art in Linton

Windmill Art is, as the name states, exhibition space in a windmill. The venue has ample parking and is close to the A14 and M11. For an invitation to the Preview evening, please sign up for my newsletter. The invitations will be going out very soon. I hope you can join us at Windmill Art on the first weekend in October.

Vandy Massey

Painting is Silent Poetry

Exhibitions