On the 10th of June 2017, I was commissioned by Stefan Goodchild and his company Triple Geek to create an image to be displayed on stage at Wembley Stadium. It was animated behind the singer Rag ‘N’ Bone Man. Stefan Goodchild has previously worked with the likes of Peter Gabriel, LCD Soundsystem, Queen, Pet Shop Boys, and Florence and the Machine.
Live footage and audio from youtube.com/watch?v=5FpQ8vPnjCk
I am honored to be chosen for Field System inaugural exhibition in Ashburton. This is an exciting new gallery in the South West, and I hope you will add yourself to their own mailing list so you can hear about all of their upcoming shows! The show will be running until Saturday the 20th April. Opening times are 11-5.30, Monday to Saturday.
More Details:
Please join us on Thursday 28th March from 6-8 pm for the private view of Sarah Hoskins’ new solo exhibition,
ENORMOUS
13 West Street, Ashburton, Devon, TQ13 7DT
We are so proud to be hosting Sarah Hoskins for the inaugural show of our 2024 gallery programme.
Influenced by the sensibilities of mid-century modernism, particularly cubism and biomorphism, Sarah creates joyously coloured semi-abstracted paintings that draw on mask traditions, the decorative arts, textile design, and historical costume.
For her show at Field System Sarah is ‘working towards communicating as clearly and concisely as possible, something of the miraculous, the beautiful, the strange and the ridiculous, amongst other things.’
Hope you can join us, Mark & Milly
Field System
This last week I have been investigating a way of working that has it’s roots in my 5 lines method. I choose 5 shapes: a 4 sided shape, a 3 sided shape, a long nose shape, a mouth shape (a rounded shape with a line through it), and a pair of circles that represent eyes. Then I arrange them in various combinations. When I have generated several, I use tracing paper to copy one, then over lay another. Once I have a drawing that is a combination of at least 2, I use carbon transfer paper to copy the image onto an A5 piece of 220gsm cartridge paper. I then paint onto this and rework the drawing in response to the coloured shapes. The materials I use are acrylic paint mixed with fine marble dust, carbon transfer, pencil, and conté pencil. These are the results so far.
This week I made an attempt at tidying and organising my ridiculously cluttered, full attic studio. Unfortunately the original objective was abandoned pretty quickly.
I have several portfolios with a mixed bag of recent and not so recent work. Most finished, some I had put to one side, effectively abandoned. When I stumbled across the half baked pieces from 2021, I felt that now was the time to finish them. It seemed the last 2 years had shown me the answers to the questions these paintings had presented to me.
There was an immediacy about them, something more clumsy and unsure than the work I’ve done more recently. It has been fun to take them in hand and clarify them.
All of the below are acrylic on watercolour paper that is 38 x 28 cm.
Sunshine is here. Flowers are opening. Bees and butterflies swerve and flutter. How can I paint?
April is a transformative month. It’s also the month my father died.
Whether I am conscious of it or not, I seem to spend the anniversary of my fathers death pushing my middle aged body to make big structural changes in my garden. This year was no exception. I now have a raised bed and 2 steps. When I look at what I have done, I think of him, and how he probably would have been amused by, and enjoyed, my hotch-potch, DIY garden.
Moving focus away from painting is disconcerting, even a little stressful. Yet, I know stepping away can be as important as remaining present sometimes. Breaks nearly always precede a leap forward.
I’m looking forward to it.
So, I did as planned (not as common as you’d think), and created a much larger version of a small painting. The original was 60 x 50 cm, the larger version is 120 x 100 cm; literally the largest canvas I can get up the stairs into my studio.
I feel I have achieved what I set out to do. It’s not exactly the same as the original, I haven’t just made a scaled up copy. I am happy with it.
Now I am working on another scaled up painting, but this time I have allowed colour to take a more central role.
It is not going as smoothly. Perhaps foolishly, I am trying to translate a square painting onto a rectangular canvas. As a result, I am having to make changes to the composition. It is becoming a very different painting to the original. I think I’m ok with that. Will update when it’s finished.
Moving up to a much bigger scale has been just as hard as I expected. Harder than I’d hoped.
For weeks I have wrestled with two 120 x 100 monochromatic canvases.
I work for that alchemical moment, when a painting transcends its materials; becomes more than the sum of its parts. That moment seems to arrive night after night. Then, morning after morning, they die.
As a painter, I am perpetually falling in love. Then, in the cruel morning light, my heart sinks, and I am disappointed again. For someone so loyal, I can be very fickle.
After so much battling, so much determination to stick to the monochromatic plan, in crept a rebellious thought. Yellow.
Sod it. What this needs is colour.
Quickly things went pop! It glowed, it was alive. Ah well, maybe next time.
I moved onto the second painting. Pink happened.
Ok, I still have a monochromatic painting to do.
An idea: make bigger version of smaller painting. Obvious really. Currently working on that. Will show and tell soon.
Every now and then, I have to look through my old work, and decide what to let go of. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes, not so much. Usually, this means I paint over it.
I felt good about the above painting when I made it, I internally wince a little when I recall its destruction. However, rather than fill my tiny home with old work, I recycle them. I actually say a little “farewell, and thank you”, just before they are obliterated. I’m probably not the best person to choose which paintings get the chop, but there is nobody here but me!
This week has been quite productive; 4 paintings completed since Wednesday.
Keeping in mind my commission of a large painting in “black and white with one dark colour”, I think it’s time to crank it up to the largest scale I can manage in my little attic studio: 120 x 100 cm.
I am concerned that the work has not been quite ‘black and white’ enough, so I’m going to see what happens when I literally only use black and white paint, no greys. We will see. I might fail, but something interesting always happens when you don’t succeed at what you originally set out to do.
Sarah Hoskins' Journal 