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by ALAN KESTNER Giclee PrintsWhen the Booker Prize is announced and you want to read the book, you wouldn’t dream of writing to the author and asking for the original manuscript – you would be quite happy with a printed copy. But, for some reason, this is quite different in the world of art where the original is prized far above any copy. The Giclee method of making a copy of your painting involves photographing it very accurately and transferring this to a computer and then printing it out with a special large inkjet printer. Unlike your desktop printer this typically uses ten or twelve different light-proof inks and makes an extremely accurate copy of your artwork. It is printed onto high quality watercolour or art paper and if done properly looks indistinguishable from the original. Of course, not all art is suitable for copying and printing using the Giclee process, e.g. thick impasto surfaces. But many pictures do reproduce beautifully and, provided the printer adjusts the colour correctly, a suitable copy is produced. So why do so many people turn up their noses at this?
Is your appreciation aesthetic or commercial?The original work of art is clearly more valuable as, by definition, it has scarcity value. But should you be judging art by its commercial value? After all, you can sit down and relax listening to a beautiful piece of music on CD rather than going to a concert and it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. So why can’t you do something similar with a giclee print of whatever painting takes your fancy? It is possible to do this with prints from famous artists, but commercially they are often of rather poor quality with quite a distortion of colour. Hence, prints are viewed as something a student might put on their wall but not a suitable decoration for your adult home. Unfortunately, this then rolls through to less famous artists whose prints, even though of very high quality, are shunned in favour of originals. And this then means that their working practice becomes un-commercial. No-one wants their prints, so their price is pushed down and they cannot recoup the cost of their originals because of the long time and effort expended in producing them. Limited edition printsOne solution that is often tried is to produce a limited edition of the print. The buyer then thinks this is something special and exclusive and justifies a higher price. But isn’t this just pandering to snobbishness? The vast majority of people are not concerned about whether a book is a first edition or not, they just want to read and enjoy the story. So, as an artist whose paintings often take months to complete, my plea is – Buy the Giclee Prints!– these copies of mine are every bit as good as the originals and you can buy them very reasonably! If you would like to see them look for “prints” on my website at “ludwikart.com” or contact me via my “contact” page.  Atomic World
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by KAY JAMIESON
Firstly, establish placement on the page, ie. Composition. Is the head in the centre or to one side, looking up or down? If it’s to be a profile then perhaps more space is needed on the side the subject is facing. Will the background be important? Maybe some tone behind the head will help in producing a 3-D effect. Any emotions which are expressed will show in the face: sadness, joy, contemplation, smile or frown. Capturing these feelings will entail some concentrated study of anatomy, particularly around the eyes and mouth. Basic measurements which help to establish placement of the features. The width of an average face equals approximately two thirds the length, but of course this will vary according to the individual. Once the shape of the face is outlined with vertical centre line and horizontal halfway measurements marked, divide into three sections, the first line indicating eyebrows, the second line the end of the nose. Between the top third and halfway lines is the position of the eyes. The lower third is divided into three to indicate mouth and chin. Ears are generally situated between the brow line and tip of the nose in a frontal view.   Lastly, practice, practice and practice some more. I hope my portrait drawing tips help you. Have fun! by ROSIE PHIPPSOnes personal truth is always mute – when it is truly expressed it is communicated in silence – and if one really has to speak what results is the translation of that silence into pictures, music, dance and other creative acts – personal, social and institutional. Every dream is a plan that lends itself to enactment in the outside world, behind every enactment in the outside world there is a dream – or a picture, a note, a movement a thought, an idea – or perhaps something that is only waiting to be discovered. Keats said – that which is creative must create itself. Creativity arises from itself, you can’t learn it, explain it, teach it – it comes upon one and creates stillness and a presence where the images and colours take on a life of their own. One becomes obsessed by it and it is creates an urgency and demands that have to be satisfied, one cannot avoid it, it has to be done.
 Birth of the Sunchild - painted around 1976
Getting in touch with the imagination and the little people (internal objects) that inhabit it is rather like dreaming, the images are able to do as they please, one has to trust the voices, the images, and the sounds and allow them to come from themselves and not control what you want them to say. It is like a dream, one is always a player in a group, sometimes an observer and at other times taking command. Other people in the group are also of value. So what comes first in a painting may not be the final image, as one has to allow other images to speak for themselves. This may involve destroying what has initially been created to allow creativity to reform itself and to recreate itself. In painting a picture this process can go on, over and over again, so that one learns that the act of creation is also one of destruction. The creator and the destroyer work hand in hand. One has to learn to live with that tension. The painting is a mirror that reflects who one is at a moment in time, the images and colours form the archetypal background to one's life and the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The grid so to speak on which one is built, enabling one to battle with questions like chaos and control, black and white, dark and light, creation and destruction, duality and unity – the unification of opposites. These questions flow from out of the paint into being itself, so the work is both meditation on life and a meditation where paint becomes an extension of psyche: one’s battle with one’s soul.  ALAN KESTNER - Art Exhibition - Hamburg, Germany |
| Video of Poolhaus Exhibtion by Tanja Pfaff Alan talks about his creative process English website: ludwikart.com German website: alanketner.com Instagram: instagram/ludwikart.com | |
LiterArties are holding a very short, small Winter Exhibition 2019 in the Studio at Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot. We are really excited about our major Spring Exhibition 2020 to be held in their large, main gallery and also the Studio!
| 2019 Winter Exhibition 26 November - 9 December 2020 Spring Exhibition 25 February - 23 March | CORNERSTONE ARTS CENTRE |
With 3 exhibitions back to back at West Ox Arts, Vale & Downland Museum and THIRTYEIGHT cafe in Summertown, it has been a very busy few weeks setting them up. Each has not been without its issues, but we have worked our way through and are ready for viewing!
WEST OX ARTS - 12th October to 9th November
VALE & DOWNLAND MUSEUM - 14th October to 2nd November
THIRTEIGHT Cafe, Summertown - ongoing
STEP 1 - First a Brusho water colour background was created, a chaotic cloud of potential, of many vibrant colours in the void. Then I had the urge to create circles in random locations.
3 'major' circles resulted, each a container and also a point, placed a-round a central copper circle. This middle copper circle is the focal Point of the painting.
Creating accurate circles with clearing defined edges is tricky. Any slight deviation or indent immediately shows. Straight edges are much easier! All the circles were made using 3 layers of lustre, applied with circular strokes, then polished and sealed.
3 'major' circles resulted, each a container and also a point, placed a-round a central copper circle. This middle copper circle is the focal Point of the painting.
Creating accurate circles with clearing defined edges is tricky. Any slight deviation or indent immediately shows. Straight edges are much easier! All the circles were made using 3 layers of lustre, applied with circular strokes, then polished and sealed.
STEP 2 and 3 - More circles of copper lustre were added, moving freely about the energetic domain. They all lie outside of the space delineated by the Trinity.
Each of the 'major' circles in the Trinity were haloed by a geometric shape - red circle:green square (space), green circle:pink circle (time), rose pink circle:green octagon (Directions). These 'major' circles are bound by force fields (symbolised by the yellow lines) to create a sacred space.
3 is the number of creation, of Mind Body Soul, different states of Being (such as liquid, solid, gas). From the Centre of 3 a created Being emerges.
The central copper circle, or sphere, has a crystal code within it that is the basis of the structure of the Being emerging out of the quantum field.
In Step 3, gold lines and patterns where then added around each of the shapes. Recognising the sacred nature of the creative process through the use of geometry and colours from light.
Each of the 'major' circles in the Trinity were haloed by a geometric shape - red circle:green square (space), green circle:pink circle (time), rose pink circle:green octagon (Directions). These 'major' circles are bound by force fields (symbolised by the yellow lines) to create a sacred space.
3 is the number of creation, of Mind Body Soul, different states of Being (such as liquid, solid, gas). From the Centre of 3 a created Being emerges.
The central copper circle, or sphere, has a crystal code within it that is the basis of the structure of the Being emerging out of the quantum field.
In Step 3, gold lines and patterns where then added around each of the shapes. Recognising the sacred nature of the creative process through the use of geometry and colours from light.
 Step 2 |  Step 3 |
QUANTUM BEING - So much like the emergence of a form of being out of the Void, constructed out of geometry and light, so too did the geometric grid in the painting Quantum Being emerge out of the canvas.
Using it as a meditative tool for visualisation you can either focus of the centre and move outwards to see what form of being emerges, providing you with some insight for interpretation depending upon what is created. Or, you can choose your own body, or that of another object/animal/person/plant, and move inwards into their central code in the quantum field. At the end of your meditation move back to the point where you started. Reflect on the impressions you had as you move in and/or outwards, and also any insights you gained.
by LiterArties Karen L French
Using it as a meditative tool for visualisation you can either focus of the centre and move outwards to see what form of being emerges, providing you with some insight for interpretation depending upon what is created. Or, you can choose your own body, or that of another object/animal/person/plant, and move inwards into their central code in the quantum field. At the end of your meditation move back to the point where you started. Reflect on the impressions you had as you move in and/or outwards, and also any insights you gained.
by LiterArties Karen L French
 I went to see Rosie in her new studio. One she admits is really only used to do relatively clean work. Light and airy with a high roof and sliding glass doors that look straight out onto a small magical garden. At the back of her garden is a shed filled with paint and canvases, “mostly old”, she confesses, used to practice on over the 40 years she has lived in Oxford. Recently retired after creating and running Oxford Professional Education Group, an independent post graduate college. She is also a Tavistock trained organisational consultant. As she made the coffee she said, “Every material is a medium that can be used for self expression. Including creating a business. It gives one a way of transcending the outside world. The medium, or indeed the ideas, becomes part of one in a way where one can feel love and a deep sense of relatedness to the world outside. A sense of equanimity. The paint on the paper creates what feels like a living being that takes one into a relationship with oneself. The deepest aspects of oneself. And then extends towards the outside world.” She explained to me that the process of painting demands an emotional flexibility. The tolerance of the spoiling and imperfections of a creation for long enough so that one is able to delay destroying it in order to be able to take in a new point of view. Sometimes one can destroy what has been created, but the real purpose is not to tear it up, the real purpose is to be able to look at the imperfections for long enough so that they can be viewed in a different way. Sometimes this can take years. It is like the way one runs one's life. The liquid puddle of paint becomes an eternal presence from which new possibilities can be reached. She said, “The canvas, is like bringing up a family , I work on it until it reaches the perfection I think is possible . And like a family it would never be abandoned, it would always be there. Something that I could never be able to walk away from.” I looked around her studio and noticed the paintings that lined the walls. Others stacked up on the floor. “Yes, “ she admitted ,”The paintings stay on the easel until they reach in my mind, or rather create, in my mind, or heart the sort of equanimity I look for in real life." She laughed, ”A relationship that I can rely on. One I am able to retreat to when all relationships began to exhaust me. A unity. An eternal bond to the process of painting, to creation. A visual diary of my life.” The subject turned to Rosie's choice of mediums. “I love the smell of turpentine and oil paint and the texture of gouache and watercolor. I sometimes say to myself, Why not try felt like Beuys, or straw like Anton Kiefer, or emblems of my body like hair like Barbara Kendrick, or blood ( Heman Nitsxh)." When I asked her if she had exhibited many of her paintings, she replied to me that most of them had rarely been exhibited. “Never good enough.” She said she wanted her paintings to have “legs”, such that they would walk into another’s imagination and create an eternal presence. Perhaps even experienced by them as something that in the looking, or rather in the process of gazing would transform them as well, and reach a point when the atmosphere in the room in which the painting hung became one of contemplation. Though Rosie said she liked her surfaces smooth, unbroken and unflawed, like skin, I noticed that some were painted on crumpled paper. She said she likes to start with disorder and chaos. But all were patterned, mostly deeply patterned. “Light creates the brush strokes and the forms, I follow those.” The broken surface of the collage did not attract her and she found them rather disturbing as she was required to bring the shattered pieces together, but she felt they always showed some area where the pieces could be pulled off. “Like some damned itch waiting to be scratched and always reminding one that the beauty that could be created could also be pulled apart. Exposing not mere skin, but the flesh behind it.” Peeled apart, what was she worried about? I understood from her that that what looked so good was merely a temporary state before decay set in. The boundary to the world was not complete and would face disintegration. A world glued together. An absurd fragmented world where the parts did not always fit. Her paintings did not remind me of this. she was concerned with wholeness and tranquility. She wondered if this was why people liked jigsaws. The disorder and then the satisfaction of seeing it all fit together. Painting had the same quality only nothing for her had to be preformed - but there again perhaps she needed a different sort of chaos and intensity to create her own finished jigsaw. A making sense of her life. Currently Rosie is working on vases of flowers. "Like the flowers of life, growing, decaying. I feel the abundance of life. Life at 74 is full of beauty. A celebration. I have had a wonderful time living in Oxford with more flowers raining in on me every day.But they are also a reminder that the same flowers will soon decorate my grave." I asked her then about the landscapes. Small paintings in stunning white frames. “Ah, the landscapes. The pleasure of sitting in a field all day staring at the way the fields are shaped by the contours of the earth. And shaped again by the shadows of the clouds that tumble across the sky. Always changing. And always there giving one a sense of familiarity and stability. The Cotswold's. So different from where i was brought up. The wild and endless landscape of the Transvaal in South Africa. No neat fields.” What are Rosie's next plans... “2019 Oxfordshire Artweeks. All my energy is now placed on preparing for the opening of my studio. I also belong to LiterArties and we have exhibitions coming up over the next year, and there are the Oxford Art Society exhibitions. So, I concluded, a full life and one filled with peace. |
by ROSIE PHIPPS
Ones personal truth is always mute – when it is truly expressed it is communicated in silence – and if one really has to speak what results is the translation of that silence into pictures, music, dance and other creative acts – personal, social and institutional.
Every dream is a plan that lends itself to enactment in the outside world, behind every enactment in the outside world there is a dream – or a picture, a note, a movement a thought, an idea – or perhaps something that is only waiting to be discovered.
Keats said – that which is creative must create itself. Creativity arises from itself, you can’t learn it, explain it, teach it – it comes upon one and creates stillness and a presence where the images and colours take on a life of their own. One becomes obsessed by it and it is creates an urgency and demands that have to be satisfied, one cannot avoid it, it has to be done.
Every dream is a plan that lends itself to enactment in the outside world, behind every enactment in the outside world there is a dream – or a picture, a note, a movement a thought, an idea – or perhaps something that is only waiting to be discovered.
Keats said – that which is creative must create itself. Creativity arises from itself, you can’t learn it, explain it, teach it – it comes upon one and creates stillness and a presence where the images and colours take on a life of their own. One becomes obsessed by it and it is creates an urgency and demands that have to be satisfied, one cannot avoid it, it has to be done.
| Before we talk about this aspect let us first enlarge on a few of the things it is not.
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Birth of the Sun Child - Painted around 1976
 Mother & Child Bella - Painted around 1998 |  Large Bowl of Flowers - Painted 2020 |
Getting in touch with the imagination and the little people (internal objects) that inhabit it is rather like dreaming, the images are able to do as they please, one has to trust the voices, the images, and the sounds and allow them to come from themselves and not control what you want them to say. It is like a dream, one is always a player in a group, sometimes an observer and at other times taking command. Other people in the group are also of value. So what comes first in a painting may not be the final image, as one has to allow other images to speak for themselves. This may involve destroying what has initially been created to allow creativity to reform itself and to recreate itself. In painting a picture this process can go on, over and over again, so that one learns that the act of creation is also one of destruction. The creator and the destroyer work hand in hand. One has to learn to live with that tension.
The painting is a mirror that reflects who one is at a moment in time, the images and colours form the archetypal background to one's life and the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The grid so to speak on which one is built, enabling one to battle with questions like chaos and control, black and white, dark and light, creation and destruction, duality and unity – the unification of opposites. These questions flow from out of the paint into being itself, so the work is both meditation on life and a meditation where paint becomes an extension of psyche: one’s battle with one’s soul.
The painting is a mirror that reflects who one is at a moment in time, the images and colours form the archetypal background to one's life and the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The grid so to speak on which one is built, enabling one to battle with questions like chaos and control, black and white, dark and light, creation and destruction, duality and unity – the unification of opposites. These questions flow from out of the paint into being itself, so the work is both meditation on life and a meditation where paint becomes an extension of psyche: one’s battle with one’s soul.
Small landscape - Painted 2021
Continuing with the theme of art inspired poetry....'capturing our creativity' in multiple modes.
LiterArties Kay Jamieson and Dennis Hamley are an artist, author partnership. The beauty of Lake Hayes, Queenstown, New Zealand, inspired Kay to paint her tranquil artwork that, in turn, inspired Dennis to pen a poem.
LiterArties Kay Jamieson and Dennis Hamley are an artist, author partnership. The beauty of Lake Hayes, Queenstown, New Zealand, inspired Kay to paint her tranquil artwork that, in turn, inspired Dennis to pen a poem.
| By Lake Hayes Dennis Hamley The sun makes soft shadows on the mountains Beyond the opposite shore. Far to our left, beyond the trees, past the town And across mighty Wakatipu, the shadows are Sharper, darker and the sun glares On the jagged Remarkables. But this is a gentler lake. Far out on the blue Aotearoan water A racing four, your granddaughter Rowing at stroke, practices. Only the soothing cry of a solitary bell-bird breaks the silence As we sit companionably together Under the trees which fringe the water’s edge. I write and you sketch. Wooden walkways snake towards us, pause, Then slide away back into the bush. Yes, people come here. But, though a faint roar from far behind us Says that plane after plane is making Its approach through the gap in the mountains Bringing yet more to the honeypot town, They are not here today. This scene is archetypal, permanent. We and the rowers are impertinent intruders. The lake is for ever. We are not. Yet what you and I do as we sketch and write Will have outcomes. Fledgling words will seek form, Questing lines and shapes will strive for unity, Until they are both complete and satisfying. So, even if nobody reads them, Nobody sees them, They will be for ever too. |
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