Christmas at Moorlinch – exhibition & shopping event

Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th December 2016 Moorlinch, our village of fewer than 200 people, can boast several artists and arts & crafts businesses despite its size. Welcome to our annual pre-Christmas event: part exhibition, part Christmas shopping, part glass-blowing! I shall be opening my studio, hanging pictures on the walls, and have art, calendars, wrapping paper, cards and whatever else I can find, on display and for sale. Meanwhile up the road there will be more too see. The full line-up is: Jenny Graham – stylised landscape paintings, drawings and photo-etchings of the West Country. “showing a new series…

Paper Angel no.1

I have been busy these last few days working out a design for a paper angel Christmas cecoration. I have plans to produce a collection of these that can be coloured in and made up by anyone who would like to. They will be for sale as a collection in my Etsy shop presently, but for now I have just the one. If you’d like to know when the collection is ready, email me at mail@nancyfarmer.net and I’ll let you know, or check in my shop in a couple of weeks. The collection will feature slightly subversive angels, and a…

How to apply gold leaf to paper – part 1

I took some step-by-step photos of this ‘gold fairy’ as I did her. Couldn’t say I’m an expert gilder, but I have had a bit of practice by now and I’ve learnt one or two things, so I thought I’d write a little explanation for anyone interested. Here (below) is the outline drawing. The circle is to be entirely gilded. To gild on paper you need to stick the gold on with something. ‘Gold size’ is what the proper glue is called that the gold leaf is stuck on with, but the actual sort of gold size you use depends…

Good and Evil, in artistic imbalance

In fact, I am with William Blake on this one (if I had to pretend NOT to be an atheist for a moment) – Devils should not be seen as ‘evil’, they are the appropriate balancing creative and chaotic force, to counteract the order personified by God and the angels. But believe what you will: I don’t, I simply like drawing them. So here, finished, are all the Angel and Demon coasters that you have seen glimpses of for the past few weeks. They are unfairly balanced: 6 devils to 4 angels, and yes, the devils are proving more popular….

Set fire to my art!

I am putting original drawings onto candles! They are, as you will guess, traced from a basic template to some extent, but only very loosely and each one is different. To do originals from scratch each time would take far too long for something I am suggesting people to set fire to, but I think they are unique enough to merit the title ‘art’. This is a taster as the blog looks hungry: more detail when I have time. If you are good, I may even tell you how I did it….

On returning from the desert, and encountering devils….

There’s been a bit of a dearth of artwork around here lately: not a self-imposed abstinence you understand – I have not really been lost in a barren wilderness, I have simply had too many other things to do. Wall-to-wall exhibitions, and the total overhauling of my studio, for a start. The exhibitions have finished now; the studio is still in a state of flux. At some point everything will be beautifully organized, but, mirage-like, this vision seems to recede with the same speed as I approach it. Here, for instance, are my newly painted and installed shelves for the…

Spring Farm Arts is open for Easter

Apparently it’s spring, so it must be time for our Easter open weekend at Spring Farm Arts. I must admit that when I put this leaflet together six weeks or so ago I did expect it to rain all weekend, because it does that. I didn’t expect sub-zero temperatures and snow… However, if you’re in Somerset and can brave the elements, we would all be delighted to see you! Opening times: Friday 29th March to Monday 1st April, from 11am to 5pm. Venue: Spring Farm Arts, Spring Farm (formerly Moorlynch Vineyard), Spring Lane, Moorlinch, Bridgwater, Somerset, TA7 9DD, UK. I…

Medusa, made flesh, in stone.

There are many things I fail to get round to posting on this blog, and it would have been a shame if this had been one of them! Following some pretty poor weather, rain, cold, rain, snow, rain and a spot of rain, it was finally dry enough for the wall of our house to be finished a couple of weeks ago, maybe even three weeks ago. And so my beautiful new carving of Medusa – carved at unbelievably short notice by Tom Clark, in Portland stone – could finally be revealed in all her glory. Here she is: My…

Turning Medusa into stone

The Medusa carving is finished and is up on the wall already! Tom Clark did the carving (in Portland stone), and it looks fantastic… the wall is not actually finished yet, but I thought I’d post some photos while we still have scaffolding to get up close to the carving with. Ultimately the wall will be white, with a rough texture but not those wavy lines which are there so that the next layer of rendering sticks on. See this post for the fallen-down-wall photos: https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/its-an-ill-wind-that-blows-nobody-any-good/

It’s an ill wind…

…that blows nobody any good. I have discovered an unexpected and (hopefully) one-time artistic opportunity! This is my sketch for the plaque that is being carved in stone to go on the wall of my house. I wanted a face, and Medusa seemed rather appropriate. An attractive Medusa, of course, one who looks alive, not an awful beheaded version of the more traditional kind: I am not carving it myself… obviously… having no skills whatsoever in the line of stone-carving. More on the local stone carver who’s doing it for me when I have checked he is ok with a…