Today we had the pleasure of welcoming artist Kate Wells to our lovely art studio space. Kate very kindly brought lots of sketchbooks and artwork to show us, and gave us the most beautiful talk about her work.
Kate began by talking about the paper in sketchbook and how she feels an affinity with certain types of paper. She explained how she likes a firm sketchbook as it keeps all her work safe. She related that a “sketchbook is how you live”: sometimes organised, sometimes not. She expressed how a sketchbook is a very personal thing, and we all will have our differing preferences. She showed us her latest small sketchbook (Moleskine), that goes with her wherever she goes and is always at hand, together with a small selection of drawing and painting media. She even demonstrated how she might use a sketchbook outside, firstly with pen which she smudged with spit, and then with a travel watercolour set and water pen. She carries with her a piece of elastic to keep her pages from blowing about outside.
She described how she leaves the first pages of a sketchbook free to write inspirational words on. The quotes that she read out were from people “who all knew about the sacredness of art and how it feeds your spirit.” She spoke about the “aliveness of line” and how the drawing tool that you use becomes part of your hand, your body: “a live living line that communicates”. She said that what she draws in her sketchbook might find its way through to the sewing machine [and this could be any method that we use to create art]; “there is a language and an aliveness that comes through to what I might play with in the studio.”
She showed us the process that she went through to create a stole that featured children’s colourful hand shapes at the base and flowing rainbow colours sweeping up the stole. She revealed how she began to keep ‘themed’ sketchbooks that she termed “working books” that contained her “working thoughts” and would enable her to keep similar studies, samples, experiments, etc, for a piece of work or series of works, in one sketchbook. These books are labeled. She shared with us a book in which she created studies of moorland heather, and where she had used gouache paint as opposed to water-colour, because it is thicker and it can be scratched into. She had also used candle wax over acrylic paint to portray dried plant stems. She observed that the studies in her sketchbooks are “never formulaic, it is always trail and error”, and she often finds herself looking to see what she can salvage. She had a book printed featuring studies from a sketchbook that she used whilst researching for a landscape commission based in North Norfolk. The printed book showed her progress towards the final and finished stitched artwork.
Her bigger books are Seawhite of Brighton (you can get them in Calder Graphics in Huddersfield, as well as online art shops). She has also created studies on paper and fabric that were too big to go into a sketchbook and so she made ‘sketchbooks’ from portfolios using plastic sleeves
Kate finished by saying that “…creating art is a form of praise because this world is beautiful.” Kate’s website is here: https://www.katewellsartist.co.uk/
A huge thank you to Kate for giving us a very special talk that we will always remember. And thank you everyone, for your enthusiasm during the session. We will be inspired for a long time to come!
