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Showing posts from September, 2013

Women Painting Women Catalogue

The Women Painting Women Exhibition at Art Exposure in Glasgow is well on its way. I am happy to say that both my paintings there sold within the first 24 hours of opening the show. I am so grateful. I hope you get a chance to go and see this show as it has some really great artists in it. Most of these are friends, whom have gotten to know each-other though the extensive network of artists that find each-other on Facebook. Facebook has been brilliant for me the past few years. While it has been a simple of means of staying in touch with friends for many, for me it has provided a network of international artists to exchange work, experiences, exhibitions and support. I have met many artists whom I first only knew on Facebook but who have now become real friends. It has been a goldmine of added value for my painting career and life in general.  The catalogue for the exhibition at Art Exposure is available to buy online, so even if you don't get to see the show, you can

Ruff Making

I am finally getting to where I want to be with my ruff-making skills. It is far from perfect, I am no seamstress after all, but at least I can work with this one....Hopefully you'll see it again in one of my paintings....

work in progress

Preparing for paintings, making collars....I look like a seamstress but honestly this will lead to painting!!

Working Pictures

Working pictures.... ruffs, patterns, lace....

Get Ready, on your marks, Pleat!

Frans Hals, Seated Woman (detail), 1633. National Gallery of Art, Washington The large ruffs you find in Dutch early seventeenth-century portraits are the results of the time consuming efforts of linen bleaching, sewing, starching and setting. A ruff is constructed from a long strip of fabric, usually very fine linen lawn ( Holland lawn was the finest around, made, obviously, in The Netherlands), gathered into cartridge pleats. The length of fabric ranged from a few meters up to nearly 20 meters and ruffs could have anything from 30 all the way up to hundreds of pleats! The famous Dutch portraits often show ruffs of around 200 pleats and we can assume that the painter painted the ruffs fairly accurately. The laundress had the responsibility to starch and set the ruff in the shape required with the aide of a hot poking stick to set the pleats. Rain and wear would 'melt' the starch and would make the ruff go floppy and the work would have to start all over again. In Jonson&