Art For The Heart: Romantic Gestures

These pieces, (Gesture I, and Gesture II), are two new works of mine which will make their debut alongside other pieces at Art For The Heart - the annual Valentine's themed exhibition at Cambridge Contemporary Art which opens tomorrow.

For this new Gestures series, and this show, I was thinking about how we express love, through signs and gestures - particularly those made by the hands, that form the shape of the heart - the universally acknowledged symbol of love, so commonly expressed in selfies and Instagram posts. As with other pieces created last year I used the sewing machine as a drawing tool to represent the hands, and then added the butterfly to represent that lightness of being, and fluttering sensation one experiences with such a powerful emotion as love.

After stitching the positions of the hands into the paper, I then had to decide which butterfly shapes to add to the final pictures. I quite liked the reverse of the pictures with the rough threads which formed a mirror image of the hands.

I had a great reaction to the pieces I exhibited in CCA's Christmas Show, so to reserve these new pieces, or other works of mine in the Art For The Heart show, then contact the team at Cambridge Contemporary Art at the address/number below. If you are unable to make it to Cambridge, but would like to commission a similar piece as a gift for your very own valentine, then contact me by phone or email. Look out for more in the Gestures series as the year progresses.


Art For The Heart 
30th January - 14th February
Cambridge Contemporary Art 
6 Trinity Street
Cambridge
01223 324222
http://www.cambridgegallery.co.uk/ 

Peter Blake: Portraits and People

Made sure I caught this Peter Blake show before it closes later this month. This is the first show in his career dedicated solely to his portraiture, and it displays a good range of his artistic styles incorporated in his portrait work, such as collages, watercolours, acrylics and oils. This exhibition also incorporates Blake's figurative sculptures created from cigar boxes and other ephemera.

This is a fantastic collage entitled Aquarium and it is the first artwork to greet you in the exhibition. It is large and incorporates a range of historical portraits taken from a variety of found printed sources. All of the people in the picture look out of the picture plane rather than at the fish in the aquarium.

These are commissions and personal portraits of friends and colleagues demonstrating Blake's techniques in the show. Below is a study from life of Helen Mirren.

The back room of the gallery is a dedicated homage to one of Blake's musical heroes - Elvis, and contains lots of memorabilia, all artfully curated and displayed in the form of two shrines.

My favourite works in this exhibition, and throughout Blake's career, are the fictional characters/portraits that he creates for wrestlers, exotic dancers and tattooed men and women. I like that their facial features are taken from different photographic sources, and that in some cases those facial features are too large for the heads of the character giving them an odd appearance, which somehow seems to suit their fictional personas. The thing that comes through in these works, like that of the Elvis shrines is that Blake is really a fan of his subject matter, and popular culture in general.

Peter Blake: Portraits and People
until 30th January
Waddington Custot
11 Cork Street 
London

Max Alexander: Butterflies Through Others Eyes #18

Brrr! It's freezing! Warm, and cosy knitted moths for these cold winter months courtesy of textile artist Max Alexander.

The Mountain Of Butterflies

Loved this Google doodle by artist Kevin Laughlin, which appeared on the search engine at the weekend to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the 'discovery' of The Mountain of Butterflies. 

Butterfly Mountain refers to an area of the Sierra Madre mountains in southern Mexico where approximately one billion Monarch butterflies migrate to hibernate every winter. The Monarchs travel south from Canada and across north America down through Texas and Mexico, before settling in the mountains of Michoacán state. The Mountain of Butterflies was discovered in 1975 by Ken Brugger and Catalina Trail as well as Canadian Zoologist Fred Urquhart who tagged the butterflies and followed their trail south to the Oyamel trees found in these regions of the Sierra Madre mountains where they live between October and March. 

The area was recognised for its ecological importance and became officially known as the Monarch Biosphere Butterfly Reserve in 1980, and then went on to gain World Heritage status in 2008. The Monarchs cluster together on trees during the winter months to conserve heat, and turn the branches a bright orange. The limbs of the trees appear to sag because of the sheer numbers of the millions of Monarchs that land on them. 

Even though Butterfly Mountain was 'discovered' in 1975, the local inhabitants of the area - the Purépecha, have known about the phenomenon for centuries, and describe the sound of millions of Monarchs taking flight to go home in March as like 'light rain'. 

The Monarch migration also coincides with the annual Mexican 'Day of The Dead' festival where people gather to remember and pray for family and friends who have died, and locals believe that the millions of butterflies that descend on the area are the souls of people's ancestors returning for their annual visit.