I finished this piece yesterday. (Well, I look at it and see bits I should perhaps tinker with but experience says NO). I was quite brave with it and I like the way the colours have worked out.

I put it last night on the kitchen table, sitting loosely in its frame. And guess what?

The cat spent the night on it. If you look closely at this snapshot, taken in the garden this morning on the ‘fig’ table (see yesterday’s pics) you will see some stray cat hairs on it. Worse has been known: muddy footprints; even (when the paper is still damp) deep claw imprints. I have been known to tear my hair.

Yesterday I mentioned some of these hazards on my Facebook artist page:

www.facebook.com/pages/Jill-Tattersall/163132550413149

But I didn’t actually think the cat would find that particular spot at all tempting! Such is life.

Brand new piece, just finished, done very quickly for once although the base paper has been hanging round for a few months till I had the courage to address the piece and work out how to do it. I was so afraid it would turn out naff!

Actually I’m really pleased with it and decided to snap it (though it’s only sitting loosely in its frame) on the original garden table where the figs sat. I was so thrilled with these picture I had to post them straight away!

The saucer with green triangles came from a cup-and-saucer set (cup broken long ago) which my mum gave my dad. Lots of associations.

This is all part of the drive to show what goes into the making of my pieces. The end product, if it works out ok, always looks as if it had just come out all of a piece in one sitting. Whereas in fact there’s a huge difference in the time pieces take. Some emerge quite quickly and seamlessly, while others skulk there waiting to take a definitive form. Some remain years in the planning/possible stage.

But they all take a fair bit of time – the materials and methods I use are pretty time-consuming. Mostly I make the paper first. Even if I don’t, as with the half-finished kiwi piece, the support is prepared first (marouflaged board) and I just can’t discipline myself out of using all sorts of materials.

You can imagine what my studio looks like: paper, boards, paints (lots of), inks, dyes, pigments, tools, brushes – all strewn everywhere in the heat of the moment. And what the punter sees: a tidy, finished piece!

Early this year we moved some tin trunks containing family archives from Oxford to Brighton. One contained a testimonial dedicated to Tim’s great-great-grandfather on his retirement from the South Indian Railways in 1880.

This was an eloquent tribute in which his co-workers (and no doubt subordinates) express their respect and describe how they have ‘grown grey’ in his service. I was touched by this piece of family history and the heartfelt wordiness of the document. Hence the piece, which uses some of the text, plus inks, dyes and earth pigments from India brought back for me by my late and dear friend Jessica. The hand-made paper was formed over old fax rolls (oh the tricks of the trade…).

We later found a portrait of the old geezer himself, who has the most magnificent whiskers. This piece is going on display at the open exhibition at the Cork St Gallery in Mayfair, August 23-31. Do come!

Just a few images from Artists’ Open House (during the month of May). Quite a challenge for us as we had moved house only a few months previously.

We had between 2500 and 3000 visitors over the four weekends (including a Bank Holiday) so it has all become a bit of a blur. We were shortlisted by public vote for Best Open House, which we were of course pleased about, but at times the press of visitors made it hard for anyone to see the art on show.

Now we’re trying to catch up with ourselves. A series of updates will follow.

In reverse order of happening: this piece was finally collected this morning. Made for open House 2012 at the Wolf at the Door, this was this year’s ‘Brighton’ piece ( last year’s was the larger ‘Beach Huts’ which also got promptly sold).

So hard to do anything about Brighton which isn’t hackneyed: this piece showed bright wintry sunshine on the sea and slushy snow remnants on the beach. And the characteristic Brighton and Hove railings are a give-away. Rather special images: we don’t see snow on the beach here every year.

Cold but dry here; in Northumberland last week Spring seemed much further advanced. Although we’ve had lots of sunshine in March it has been bone dry and everything seems in a state of arrested development.

That’s how it seems in other ways; Artist’s Open House starts in just over a month and neither our building works, our garden nor – much to the point – does my art work feel as if they are bursting into life. There’s plenty under way; it just seems held back like the Spring. We need the equivalent of a good downpour and some hot sunshine and all that nearly-finished work, like those half-emerging plants, that nearly-completed bathroom, will surge into new life!

Instead of always displaying work that’s complete, that looks as if it were done from start to finish according to one plan or sweep of ideas, I thought it’d be interesting to start showing some unfinished pieces. Some struggle into existence over days, weeks, even (occasionally) years. Just a few spring into life in one fell swoop. Joyous and liberating when it happens. But I think you need the alternation between hard graft and spur-of-the-moment, perspiration and inspiration. It’s just like writing or (I imagine) composing: you need to be able to get right into the detail, but also pull back and be your own editor, to cast a cold eye over what you’re doing.

Recently there’s been a lot of perspiration after an unintentionally long break from proper work in the studio. I need unbroken time to get through the barrier of over-editing, being too critical, too hard on myself. There’s a moment when, after lots of thought and/or hard work, everything seems poised and ready for action, resolution and completion. I thought I’d got there this week but there have been more interruptions (good as well as bad!). By next week some of these pieces (and more) should be taking their final form.

Lots afoot since my last post: building, plumbing, house repairs of all kinds. Harder to pick up the threads of my art work, much interrupted. Now it’s time to register The Wolf at the Door for Artists’ Open House again – for which I’ll need lots of new work anyway. Ideas have been knocking on my mind’s door, been postponed, piled up, got confused. If I don’t get stuck in now I will soon be embroiled in exhibition admin!

So here are some pics of my studio and about ten or twelve pieces of work in progress and lots of raw materials – not the ideal way to work but the only way I can pick up the threads.

It’s like a metaphor for my mind at present: some organised and distinct bits in there but a lot of chaos and disorder, things swirling about and recombining in unexpected ways. So now I know it’s starting to work again, after the usual doubts: that mixture of design/plan and serendipity/chance that I’ve talked about before, and the boldness to take risks and maybe wreck it all!

Have a look at the Jill Tattersall Artist and Wolf at the Door Facebook pages to see what’s going on in more detail.

Two moves in two years, two seasons of Brighton and Hove Artists’ Open House, then some unexpected disasters. A broken ankle with complications, a dodgy back, a disastrous removal firm – fair reasons I guess for a limited artistic output.
The workshops haven’t yet begun either, with the exception of a splendid day making wondrous things with children (and veg) for the Brighton Science Festival. It’s going to be repeated next February, which reminds me to post some pictures here soon of the wonderful creations we made last year.

Now we’re bogged down in more predictable kitchen sink dramas: broken boiler, solar panels to install, overgrown garden. But a few green shoots of recovery: