Arty Party 6 theme sentence is : my university studio in winter & my summer studio in a very small flat. I was inspired to do 2 painting series to capture the essence of each studio space, the one at uni and the other at home.
For my university studio space I did 8 small acrylic paintings called Carry Me. For my very small flat studio I did 4 acrylic paintings called Beauty in the Mundane.
In the series Carry Me, 4 of the paintings are about the actual shoes I wore to university. My shoes supported my weight. They carried me from home to uni and back again. They transferred me. I depended on them to move me, and they never let me down! In the same series the other 4 paintings are about my actual rucksack which carried my fruit and lunch everyday to university to sustain me. I depended on my rucksack in the low times, hard times, fire and it didnt let me down. I could lean on my rucksack whenever wherever. It was there for me!
Above is a side view photo shot of the edges of 8 paintings in the Carry Me series.
For the series Beauty in the Mundane, I have chosen to paint 4 things in my flat: inside my trainer, my unzipped coin purse, my thumb print and my unmade bed. To me these things seem ordinary, unexciting, repetitive, unproductive. I have painted close-ups of each one in muted, pastel, dulled colours. The effect is a quietness but also a subtle beauty. I made stencils from Japenese kimono print patterns for the backgrounds. I painted the Japanese words for trainer, purse, thumb print and bed in black on the relevant paintings. Unexpectedly the series looks modern, contemporary and conceptually fashionable. I like them!
Above is a photo shot showing the gold and silver edges of Beauty in the Mundane series paintings. The gold and silver colours are to do with highlighting the title where gold is for beauty and silver is for mundane.
Here is a slide show of the 12 paintings inspired from Arty Party 6. They are in a dialogue about my two studios:
Ruth Newell 