Carole and I recently visited the ceramics department at the V&A museum. We were blown away by the range and quality of what we saw, here are just a few examples.
As we left the museum, I spotted a jar of seed markers on sale, and bought a few. I knew I wanted to do something artistic with them, I just wasn’t sure what.
Seeing how they were meant to be used in a garden – I returned to a previous favourite of mine, the poppy. I worked up an abstraction of poppy heads on the reverse of the sticks.
I’m really pleased with how these turned out. I should have left it there, but sometimes it’s tempting to keep on keeping on, and before I knew it…
…I’d gone too far. I really didn’t like what I saw in front of me so I painted over this image.
Frustrated, I abandoned the work. A few days later, I went to a preview of the new wing of the Tate Modern with a couple of good friends. We had a great time, and on my return home – I painted a version of the graphic which was on our preview invitation, onto the blank seed marker ‘canvas’.
I certainly didn’t imagine this when I first spotted the seed markers at the V&A, and I’m OK with the fact that I’ve ended up with an abstraction of a museum, painted onto something I bought at…a museum.
