Art in Action visit

On Thursday we took a trip over to Art in Action at Waterperry Gardens near Oxford (www.artinaction.org.uk).

We had a great day, the event is bigger than I expected. If you haven’t been before it is a large event showing artists and their work. Many of the artists demonstrate and all are happy to talk about their work and their techniques. There are classes and talks and a Market.

A couple of chums were there, Sue (suebrownprintmaker.blogspot.com) was demonstrating/selling her amazing bird collagraphs in the lovely Nature in Art area, and Sharon (blog.sharonmcswiney.co.uk) was selling her metal work and jewellery in the Market.

I took a camera but unfortunately didn’t think to use it, but the web addresses will hopefully illustrate it for you.

I was particularly impressed by the drawing tent. It was very quiet in there but there were some very talented people who were clearly forging their own path, and so it was one of the least commercialised of all the tents.

I had a lovely chat to Julia Polonski (juliapolonski.com) who does wonderful large scale work based on the human figure, with compressed charcoal and pencil. The work appears to have large elements of frottage incorporated, but in fact it is all drawn. She is very inspired by renaissance artists, and some of the patterns come from a study of these paintings, but she gives her work an incredible contemporary twist by the way she uses these ancient images. I hope you enjoy looking at her website, she really inspired me.

I was also very impressed by Sarah Morpeth (sarahmorpeth.com). We went to visit her on Sue’s recommendation and I came away with a gorgeous small scale seabird book.

If you weren’t able to go this year, make a date for next July, and I hope you enjoy looking up some of these links.