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Weekly Blog

Art Race

4/22/2022

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,7 Days to go until D Day.  I've been trying to get together a complete show for The Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead (4th-8th May).  As remaining work from New York is still mid-Atlantic somewhere I needed to start from scratch for the UK spring shows in January.  
The latter stages of this process have coincided with the Easter Hols and an attempt at being an, at-least-sometimes-present mother and partner.  Consequently I've been trying to work super efficiently.  For me this means working on three pieces at the same time.  It is too boring to go into in any great depth, but since there are many drying and pressing stages to each of my pieces, this method means that paintings can be at various stages of drying while I work on the others.  This sounds simple enough but, as Ms. Dyslexia 1984, I find the coordination of this so incredibly difficult..  I have been also trying to bring the odd bit of work home, which means that my route to and from the studio can be traced by a Hansel and Gretel style deposit of small painted circles.  Troublingly I also found one in the shower the other day. 
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Peace and Painting

4/8/2022

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Last week I managed to finish a piece that I began preparing at the end of last year.   Because these types of paintings have multiple procedures and stages and are quite time consuming I tend to have one on the go over a long period.  
I love making this type of piece as it does not involve any machinery at all.  Each of the tiny elements are made of ripped  watercolor paper and painted of leafed .  Then I tip the edges with colour so that the ripped edge is not bare.  This takes ages but is perfectly pleasant, plus I was lucky enough to have both parents and Tess my daughter to help!  I have a big sort out after that, then the layering begins.  This uses vats of glue.  After that is done and dry (a couple of weeks) then I have the joy of folding all the bits up.  This is madly satisfying.  

My starting point was a series of snowy colour studies that I made on the beach in Herne Bay at dusk.  Artist's love a bit of dusk.  And snow does such bizarre things to nature.  The reflection of a evening sky on the snow created this quite wild ultramarine where you would expect white.  Acoustics are always altered by a muffle of snow, but when coupled with sounds of the sea, there is a weird calm-ish tension. 

Beginning it at christmas when you are supposed to be full of peace, but actually are full of the opposite... and pies, was probably a cry for calm! Since then news has become even more ominous and we are collectively horrified at how ghastly people can be to other people, calm feels sharp and necessary.     

The Beach, Muffled will be at the Affordable Art Fair with my Gallery, The Linda Blackstone Gallery, in May.

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Oil Fires at Sea

3/31/2022

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I delivered this large "wreath", as they call it, to Mark and Celine's apartment in London on Saturday.  I started the commission in October '21 so it was brilliant to see it installed.

At the beginning of the process Mark spoke to me about his love of oil fires at sea.  I assumed my calm face and listened on.  Of course he had a bunch of photos to show me, and then I understood.  I'm used to using the sea as the ultimate provider of calm, even when it's stormy, so his images completely challenged that.  Sea and fire, water and oil are both complete contradictions.  The idea was such an exciting and challenging starting point.  

SInce contrast is what we were both after, the first step was to work out a palette.  I upped the saturation from source material.  Mark and I were both keep to use more bright red than would naturally occur in fire.  I soon realised that palette alone wouldn't be descriptive enough, so at that point I knew that this would be a mixed media piece.  I made a few miniature studies for Mark so we knew we were on the same page.  He and Celine  picked their favourite and were very helpful communicative about their hopes for the piece.

In the end the mixed media included gouache for it's matte opacity and to contrast, gold, silver, bronze , aluminium, an unidentified and black metal leaf, I also used nail varnish for it's oiliness,, brusho ink, and metal powders, 

Obviously I got covid in the middle, but it was actually quite helpful in that it gave me 10 days of slightly feverish focus on the painting.  After the painting was done (about 3-4 weeks) I had the joy of assembling the chainmail which is always so satisfying.  I think there is a video on my instagram @esther.miles. 

Thank you to Mark and Celine for commissioning this challenging work, and for being so lovely throughout.

The finished piece is about 900 x 900mm.
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New York Affordable Art Fair, and feeling a bit behind.

3/24/2022

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In many ways it's all go this week. 
The New York Affordable Art Fair opened yesterday.  My first show with Affordable Art NYC was meant to be in spring 2020, so you can imagine how well that went.  My poor gallery spent a fortune shipping the work only for it to end up stranded in a container in NYC for months.  I have some work in Washington DC and in Boston, but New York seems impossibly glamorous to me, all the more since I have never been.

Very much on this side of the pond, I have a new piece in Herne Bay at Beach Creative this week.  My studio is upstairs at Beech Creative, so it's lovely to represent!  I am invigilating tomorrow afternoon  (Friday) if  anyone is about.  

I am trying very hard to get a collection together for Spring shows.  Two big ones are basically ready and several more are in the works,  I am attempting to be more ambititious with size and complexity, but this does mean things are taking a lot longer.  Having done quite a lot of teaching last term, I am only now able to fully focus on painting.  I see some long hours at the studio over the next month.   I actually like doing long focused hours and am yet to get bored, but I feel bad for the sake of the family, (said every mother ever).


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