Heather Ritchie

Still making Christmas cards. Time is fairly whizzing along now. We are in the middle of November already. I am sure November only started last week...I could be wrong but that is what it feels like. We have had lots of rain and gales lately and I am having to clear out the wet birdfood and dry the table every couple of days. After all what self respecting bird would want porridge?

I enjoyed drawing the deer in last week's post so I thought I would do a few more. To simplify things I have used the same image as one of the deer last week. I tried lots of variations of different colours and shades but I thought this one worked the best.

I also thought I would do a white background to see which I preferred. I like them both.

Matilda and Ruby

My featured artist this week is a very lovely lady and friend called Heather Ritchie. We first met years ago when staying at her B&B in Reeth, North Yorks. We had stayed the year before and Heather was away but her husband knew we were interested in arts and crafts and let us have a peek into her fascinating studio. We were inspired by all the wonderfully coloured rugs she had created just from strips of wool fabric. You can view more of her rugs here.

Heather is a very well known and respected rug maker and teacher and travels all over the world holding workshops and displaying and selling her rugs. She even made a lovely rug inspired by one of my paintings. The photos below cannot show the tiny details within the very large rugs and the wonderful shades of wool she uses which she dyes herself. She uses her local landscapes of Yorkshire and her daily life and memories to create the rugs. My brother's partner Lesley is in the process of writing a book about Heather's life in rugs which is to be published next year. Can't wait for that.

She has also started a not-for-profit organisation called Rug Aid which is dedicated to teaching blind people in The Gambia to create their own rag rugs and sell them to provide living funds. On the 21 November the organisation is holding a Rug Rave in which groups or single people can participate to either make their own rugs or raise money in other ways for the organisation. You can read about that on the website too.

Heather's Studio in Reeth

Guiding Light rug

Bearing Gifts rug showing Heather carrying her sheep

The Ha'penny Ferry Rug

Rug of Fleet, Heather's Dog

Christmas Eve Rug

These two lovely delicate etchings below are by printmaker Flora McLachlan. The images are very magical and fairytale-like and totally mysterious. I love her work. You can see more of it a quite a few places on the Internet including Art of Illustration, (you will have to go to the bottom of the page and enter Flora's name - sorry, I cannot link to the right page for some reason, but there are three pages to look at, here at Sanders of Oxford, and here at Artweeks Gallery.

The Flowering

The Wood Pool

So much lovely autumn scenery around at the moment. Our weather has been very changeable lately. We have had lots of mists, a few frosts and now we are being battered by gale force winds and rain which is all coming from the south. I expect there will be far fewer leaves on the trees after this weekend.

If you like your ceramics quirky with wildlife on them you cannot get better than Anna Lambert. Anna is an English ceramacist living in Yorkshire who has work in many galleries and craft shops. She has a huge display of her work here at the Junction Workshop. The cockerel below is actually a tureen and has feathers for a ladle. Intriguing.

Bowl With Field Birds

Oat Jar With Herring Gull

Cockerel Tureen

Have you ever noticed what long eyelashes cows and horses have. Seems a little unfair really when they are not the least bothered about what they look like. You will need to click on the pictures to see them in more detail.

Anne Anderson is a Northern Irish artist and illustrator who now works mostly in printmaking. You can find more examples of Anne's beautiful work here at Artzyard Gallery, here at Seacourt Print workshop and here you will find a site called No Alibis which is producing a limited edition book called "The Book of Lost Things" which she is illustrating.The three lovely images below are her work.

Love Birds Collograph

Prevailing Wind

Scrabo Through The Window

I am always on the lookout for interesting and attractive cards. Christmas cards always appeal to me if they feature partridges in pear trees. These were buy one, get one free, so I got a couple of each design.

I came across a poetry book in a charity shop the other day and it is one I have wanted for a while. It is A Shropshire Lad by AE Housman. This particular copy is very special because it is illustrated by one of my favourite wood engravers - Agnes Miller Parker. Parker was Scottish and quite famous for her book illustrations. Her work is so beautifully elegant and rhythmic with well defined textures.

This is a well-known but very beautiful poem of Housman's. If you click on the image you can see it large enough to read. Housman was an English classical scholar who died in 1936.

Art In Action 2009 (Part Two)

This is the 2nd and final part of Art In Action images. I hope you enjoy them. Back to normal blogging next week. I apologise for some of the photography being skewiff but there were a lot of people to contend with there.

My thanks go to Dolores of True Blue Canadian for my latest blog award. Pop over and say hello to Dolores and for a look at her lovely blog.

This is my design called "The Sweetest Fruit". Another of my copyright free deer designs from my book although the tree is my own creation. Still lots more to come though. That book has proved a real bargain.

Pen and ink hen drawing, which makes a change as I am usually drawing cockerels.

This is called Art Deco Flowers and I am not totally happy with it. It hasn't lived up to its potential when I first sketched out the design. Perhaps the colours are wrong. I am not sure but I have only posted it because it took so long to create...haha. The individual flowers are nice but not with the stems. Anyway, you win some and you lose some...and this poor thing is definitely in the latter category.

Jane Mowat was the first person I came to in the printmaking marquee and her work is quite beautiful. It has a very textural and mythic quality. She is a very charming lady and gave us detailed explanations of how she prints. She produces her lovely prints by hand burnishing very uneven woodblocks. They are often slices of tree that she cuts the image into. If you enlarge the picture below you can see the slice of tree on her stand. I had to admire her industry as some of these blocks are huge and it must take ages to print by hand. Jane has a website here which shows that she does more than just printmaking.

Jane Mowat's prints at her stand

Flying Figure woodcut print

Detail of St. Francis and the Birds

Jane Mowat Print

This is Katherine Jones demonstrating collograph making in the printmaking marquee. Katherine's website is here.

Jane Freear-Wyld is a textile artist who weaves abstract images from manipulated digital photography. This piece below is only a section of the entire tapestry. I couldn't stand back far enough to get the whole thing in, but this gives an idea of the beautiful shapes and colours she produces. Jane has a website here. I actually found the website a bit of a challenge but you will see what I mean if you go for a peek.

Here is Jane demonstrating how she weaves her tapestries at her loom. She was more than happy to answer lots of questions about her work. The piece on the loom was a VERY complex weave with masses of colours and shapes.

Louise Gardiner had a beautifully colourful stand in the Market marquee. Louise is a well known embroideress who creates the most delicious images of figures, birds and flowers. Her best known images are her lovely ladies though. She has a very illustrative style and her pieces show a great sense of fun and laughter. Her website is here.

And here is one of her cupcake images on a Graffiti card I bought. I would love to own one of her original textile pieces.

These three views are of Nichola Theakston's marquee space. Nichola is a very successful sculptor of ceramic images of wildlife. I spent quite a while browsing the beautifully sculpted pieces on show. I particularly enjoyed her hares. She has a website here with lots of views of her work and also describes the process of building an armature and the preparatory sketches.

I love this little stripey fellow in the foreground. Not sure what he is though.

This is Rachael Howard's stand although I didn't get to see her in person. She is a very well known textile designer who creates delightful sketchy images and then appliques and embroiders them. Her work is very often amusing and she has a great gift for capturing situations and people around her with natural flair and freshness.

And here is one of her lovely designs in fabric applique and embroidery which I bought as a greetings card. (Yes, I bought a lot of cards whilst I was at the show).

I met artist Alison Ingram in the Nature In Art Marquee, but unfortunately I was so engrossed by her art that I forgot to take a photograph. Her work is absolutely amazing and so complex in design and colour and shape. She paints in traditional style as well as stylised. I could never paint in her style as I would get very confused, but she does it beautifully. She has a very comprehensive and vivid website here although the images below are from the handmade greetings cards I bought from her. I love all her work but I particularly like her birds. I think the coots below are my favourites although the avocets are gorgeous too.

Coot and Chicks

Five Fallow

Puffins On Wick

Sue Symond's is a needlework specialist and an artist. These pictures can't show the incredible beauty of her work. The displayed work on her stand related to a book of Creation which she has been working on for two years. It will consist of 60 pages of artwork with very detailed embroidery and exquisite painting. A sample of her work is shown here. The butterflies around the edges are all embroidered and the centre panel is painted. If you enlarge the picture you will get an idea of the true beauty of the piece. Sue lives in Somerset and is well known for her Bath Abbey Diptychs which can be seen here.

Sue Symond's book "Creation"

Some of the beautiful work on Sue Symond's stand

Miriam Maselkowski creates a style of work I haven't seen before. She creates pictures from nails and thread by wrapping the threads around hundreds of nails to give a 3D image. Sounds simple but I suspect from the detail in her work that it is a lot more complex than she describes it. This is Miriam below who I chatted to for several minutes. A very charming lady with a great talent and I wish her lots of luck in the future. Click on the images to get the full detail.