Jill Tattersall Mixed Media Art

This hand-cast cotton paper piece, using pen and ink, acrylic washes and dry pigment, is part of my ‘Global Warning’ (sic) series. Most of these incorporate some text of a vaguely apocalyptic nature about the dodgy interaction of man and nature. This one is simply entitled: The Rain Falleth Down’.

And that is how I remember the Old Year.

But today in Brighton, on 1 January, the sun shone against all dire prognostications. So I’d better set to and prepare an optimistic sun-filled piece for the New Year!

Not the usual romantic imagining of a wintry scene, but pure fact! Last weekend saw thick snow lying everywhere hereabouts. Brighton and Hove artists and photographers must have been out in their hundreds to capture the moment.

This is a quick mixed media print dashed off as my annual Christmas card – I hope it makes up in its christmassy flavour for what it lacks in finesse. So warmest wishes to all family, friends and acquaintances, viewers, buyers, old Uncle Tom Cobley an’all…

After weeks of incessant rain, this cast paper piece has the right title even if the colours symbolise meltdown rather than washout. It’s based on an apocalyptic biblical text and I suppose represents my image of what’ll happen if global warming continues to its ultimate conclusion.

I’m now a member of Hove Arts and indeed find myself a representative to Artists’ Open Houses, the main Brighton and Hove festival-related artists’ body. There’s a lot to learn about local practices, but the next couple of weeks offer everyone the chance to visit artists and crafts-makers in their homes and studios. I intend to take full advantage of this and made an enjoyable start last weekend. Many offer mulled wine, mince pies and music as well as enticing Christmas presents. Details at:

www.aoh.org.uk

The last few months have seen total upheaval and little in the way of art work, plus no means to update this page. My last weeks in Lincolnshire included Open Studios, exhibiting work at Stamford Arts Centre and finishing this commission, Vitis Vinifera. This reminds me that here in Sussex, where life is still chaotic and strange, the local vineyards are close to harvesting their grapes after some blessed weeks of sunshine.

This commission for Ewan and Sarah, visitors to my Open Studio, incorporates text from Culpeper’s Herbal which roundly states that wine is ‘the greatest cordial among vegetables’ – i.e. good for the heart. What more to say?

…this is the title of the exhibition that has just opened at the Carre Gallery, Sleaford, with work from John Lincoln, Steve Leaning and me (on till 20 June). It could have been called ‘water under the bridge’ judging by the time elapsed since my last post.

In that time I’ve opened my studio for the last time here in Lincolnshire – two weekends in April – sold some pictures, started and completed a commission, prepared for the forthcoming exhibition – and (all being well) – sold and bought a house. There’s many a slip…. But if all goes well my next studio opening will be Open Houses in Brighton/Hove.

I’ll also have a last fling at a two-week Art on the Map show at Stamford Art Centre in July, during which time we are set to up sticks and move. It has been an impossibly busy time and it’ll seem a miracle if everything works out ok!

Last October, as I posted an image of my first version of the text of the late-night shipping forecast, I had a strong sense of timeliness. The storm was clearly gathering. I hope it doesn’t now seem like a tasteless joke, but that text continues to haunt me and it seems ever more appropriate to the spirit of the age. So here’s my second attempt.

My next exhibition, to be shared with two other artists, is called ‘Seeds of Change’. So I keep hopefully waiting for green shoots to start appearing in the pieces I am working on. As I reported a propos of my last year’s solo ‘Chance or Design’ show, those pieces have a mind of their own and often depart from their (or my) intended direction because of some unconscious prompting.

This is a farewell to my homage to Darwin, a piece I did last year without realising consciously that the 200th anniversary of his birth was about to be celebrated.

I’ve long found Darwin a most interesting and sympathetic figure, but having to translate a learned address into French for my anthropologist brother rekindled my curiosity and I started collecting ideas, images and thoughts. It’s that strange (often long) process which eventually leads to a finished art piece.

This piece has gone to a friend and fellow-artist, but I’m not finished with Darwin yet…so much more to explore.

The long gap between posts is entirely due to the above. I was invited to arrange an exhibition for Art on the Map, the Lincolnshire Open Studios network, at Grantham Museum.

This was a first for me: while I’ve had many solo exhibitions, and contributed to innumerable group shows, I haven’t before organised a 15-person effort – with glass, felt, ceramics and metalwork as well as paintings. As we had an advantageous deal with the Museum all the work fell to us – and mainly to me as I’d been offered the show in the first place.

Totally shattering! But I think it looks great, and despite the dire economic climate work has been selling well. Pieces bought for Christmas presents are being collected tomorrow and new work added.

Come and see it if you’re in the region : ‘Vaut le Voyage’, as the French say! On till the last day of January, Mon-Sat 10-4.

I didn’t know how prophetic this piece was when I completed it a few weeks ago. The text is from that well-known litany which as a child I found at once baffling and soothing, the Shipping Forecast. ‘There are warnings of gales in Viking, Forth, Cromarty … North Utsire, South Utsire….’ A sort of incantation.

The piece had been gestating in my mind for a while alongside the increasing turbulence in the economy, the two closely linked in my mind. Here is a detail:

It must be right for the times: no sooner made than sold. It was done for the annual Open Exhibition at the Pierrepont Gallery, Thoresby, in Nottinghamshire. Now I wish I had taken better photos of it as I won’t see it again. I am slightly nervous about my next piece: will it turn out to be upbeat or pessimistic? My family say I’m a witch….

I have been invited to hang some of my pictures in this gorgeous restaurant right on the beach in Brighton. Trouble is, the view is so endlessly interesting that I’m not sure anyone would want to look at anything else. Due South prides itself on its sustainability as well as its utterly delicious food, so it feels a doubly appropriate location for me. Though I don’t suppose for a moment they use recycled materials – at least in the dishes.

Since childhood I’ve been obsessed with food and cooking, and drive my family mad by wanting to photograph our meals when we’re about to eat. Time I started work on some long-planned ‘food’ pictures. The two pieces you can see here are not remotely food-related: An Habitation of Dragons, with its intense blue washes of cobalt, and my homage to Charles Darwin, ‘I Think’ – Darwin’s Tree.