It’s been a busy start to the year, and I’ve taken a bit to get into the art flow. (I say that as if I have already but I’m still a bit chaotic and disorganized!) Away for weekends in the caravan, tramping, the arrival of a new grandbaby has all combined to put the squeeze on my artmaking but in the best possible way! Though doing the things I enjoy and spending time with the people I love best is OK by me!
I’ve been working on carriages as an extension of the ‘riders’ who were sitting on elaborate structures on the backs of animals and I started to think ‘wheels, so I raided the toybox for small cars and started creating structures around them.
“Racer’ 200 × 120 × 170mm
These ‘racers’ were something that was kind of fermenting over the Christmas period. They are the ideal project when time is short and disrupted, much like the quirky little birds I make, they are small (fit in the palm of my hand) so don’t take the brainpower and focus of the bigger pieces. Did I mention fun! There’s nothing serious about them, they came out with a bit of a futuristic fantasy vibe, making me think of Mad Max vehicles, with nothing making sense on them. There’s also ideas of merry-go-round animals too with the carriages having animal or bird heads.
‘Speedy’ 190 × 80 × 190mm
As I am very much enjoying the rearranging aspect of my artworks lately, I made the characters unfixed so they can be moved to different positions. There’s a bit of fiddling to get them right.
‘Vroom’ 170 × 130 × 120mm
Another inspiration feeding into this was my interest in stop-motion video, I need to get them racing! I’ve realized that, with grandkids, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 10 years playing imaginary games with dinosaurs, Duplo and toy cars so it’s not surprising I’ve been influenced by toys.