Vidya Wolton

Well what can one actually fit into an A3 envelope and send off to the Farnham Maltings to get shown in their cafe and exhibition spaces?  Here are a few Island entries. The ‘umbrella’ mobile is a memory piece by Island-based artist Lisa Traxler. Lisa is perhaps better known for her painting but has a background in fashion photography, with current work using old photographs in new and inventive ways. Check out Lisa’s website at www.lisatraxler.com . My own piece is actually on the cafe wall at the Maltings and isn’t quite in the intended envelope-form as shown here. However, if there are any readers local to Farnham who happen to look at my blog (always hopeful), then check out this piece on the wall, together with its envelope which also has a fair wack of paint and collage. Great to see there is still snow in Farnham. The Isle of Wight has it’s own adventure at the moment with local flooding. Negotiating the roads around Ryde was quite hazardous and in my local town of East Cowes the fire service is at work even as we speak pumping water out from the town centre. Freaky isn’t it?

Last week was spent cat-sitting in the village of Shorwell, providing an excellent opportunity for some sketching in the fields behind the house. I was able to station myself at one particular viewpoint with a wide vista across much of the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight. I’ve worked directly into the sketchbook and also from a colour copy (shown here). I have to say, this is something of a departure: a straight depiction and the use of naturalistic colour, but then again why not! Be straightforward for a change and as a novelty it worked for me to simply draw what I was seeing. These exercises in observation have proved fruitful in the return to the studio as I’ve been able to work onto colour copies mounted onto canvas or board. There seems to be something of a mini-project emerging so I think I’ll go with the flow and see where it leads.