Latest exhibition details! Kettering!!

"Views and Shoes" 

The latest place to see my cut paper collages is a month long exhibition at Kettering Art Gallery, Northamptonshire.

 It runs from 29th August to 26th September 2015 and will feature 20 works based on the English countryside, along with specific views of places and buildings in and near Kettering. Added in will be something completely different for me too - cut paper collages of shoes too. There is a reason for this!  More soon! I will be posting more photos tomorrow - photos that show the cut paper texture and news of another way of working..........featured on the poster is the church of St. Peter and St. Paul. It was a wonderfully sunny day when we visited once. The bunting was blowing in the wond and it was just such a happy day to walk round the town. We had another meal at Wetherspoons! ham, egg and chips and a half of shandy for me. Cheap and cheerful meal for us two and its great sitting up in the balcony area as there are LOADS of old books on the shelves. Wetherspoons probably bought them in by the metre! It doesn't matter really...it was the time my partner Mark and I were spending together, precious time, wandering and chattering about Kettering.

Its been VERY busy! - have moved house.....

Its been extraordinarily busy since January! Not only has the Slices of Life exhibition at Salisbury Museum been put up - more news soon of that as its a big thing! I have also moved house and county!!! We moved at the beginning of April to Arlesey in Bedfordshire. Its just over the border from Hertfordshire so I have moved about 13 miles, but it feels very different here. I havent lived in a village since I left home at 19 and its so fantastic to be back in a village. we arent on a main road so all I can hear are the birds and the trains in the distance as they go down the East Coast mainline. Sometimes I can hear the football at Arlesey Town Football Club, but beyond that, its very quiet and laid back.

The house is so lovely. Not very wide but extends to a garden of 120 feet at the back, it over looks a paddock with horses grazing. I keep pinching myself its real and that I am not in a holiday home that I have to vacate after a couple of weeks!! Its got this wonderful kitchen window cut through. I think that will be a place to make still life's and draw. draw, draw....

The kitchen cut through window......

Horses grazing out the back....

Down by the river with buttercups that spread as far as I can see!

Tree Court, Cambridge - Commission for a Couple

This is a very recent commission for a couple that both went to college in Cambridge. In fact their halls was in Tree Court where this piece is based. I am very ashamed to say I hadn't heard of Tree Court, or ever visited it, so when I went for my recce trip to see I have to say I fell in love. What beautiful trees!!!! They have such slender end elegant lines and were just the loveliest thing to draw.

Tree Court commission drawing © Vanessa Stone

Tree Court commission drawing © Vanessa Stone 2015

Tree Court Commission © Vanessa Stone 2015

A commission always starts in the same way - someone contacts me about an idea they have and then I prep up some drawings from which they choose their favourite composition. These drawings above and the ones I sent off and you can see which one was chosen. I have to say this was one of my favourite commissions. Its slipped off the knife so easily.  found it hard to deliver and let go. Pieces aren't always like that. Sometimes they are a pig to make and I am happy to finish them!!

Tree Court commission ©Vanessa Stone 2015

And here is the finished piece. Its approximately 25 cm x 25 cm and framed in a solid birch wood deep frame. Its mounted in Arches watercolour paper and window mounted to show off the texture of the watercolour paper.

Tree Court Commission ©Vanessa Stone 2015