Jane keeps a good learning blog. Not only are her drawings a delight, but she has a chatty honest style, and is disarmingly self-critical. She knows how to motivate herself: at the end of a section, she’s stopped and reflected on what she has learned: for example: So, key learning points: 1. My positioning...
OCA tutor Linda Khatir welcomes student Vicky Speirs onto its new Painting 2 course, Mixed Media; one of the options if working towards the BA(Hons) Painting degree, or the BA(Hons) Creative Arts degree. Linda says: ‘in previous modules Vicky has shown an inventive and enthusiastic approach to art practice. This is important when considering...
Its hard to know who we ‘should be looking at’ when studying art. It’s easier to follow one’s nose and just investigate artists when you come across something you like. However, I can’t get away from the niggling feeling that there must be lots of contemporary artists that I should know more about, but...
The creative urge just won’t go away….. that’s what brings many people in mid life to OCA. Here Jane Perkins tells the story of her mid life conversion to achieve her creative dreams. ‘As a young child, I always enjoyed being creative; drawing, embroidery and ‘making things’. From school, I trained as a nurse...
In painting you have to confront your own history and all your naked ambition; there’s no escape. And you have to confront the whole history of art. Picasso said when he saw the paintings at the Lascaux Caves, there is nothing more to be done.’ said Hoyland in his interview with Damien Hirst in...
I went to the opening of OCA tutor Maggy Milner’s new show at the Victorian workhouse in Southwell last week (previously posted about here). The installations were delicately beautiful, and deeply sensitive and thoughtful evocations of the possible feelings of the workhouse inhabitants. What was most striking about the event was how engaged people...
The new Barbara Rae sketchbooks edition (Royal Academy 2011) is a revelation and I believe will help all those who struggle to maintain the freshness and spontaneity of their sketchbooks in their final work. Barbara Rae defies definition in the contemporary art scene, but has a solid and consistent voice that has been unwavering...
Sheffielders love or loathe it, but Council workers must have a sentimental streak, since some dramatic graffiti has remained in place (for years) on a link bridge at a precarious height on Sheffield’s iconic example of brutalist 60′s architecture, Park Hills Flats, which sits resplendent above the city’s railway station. In fact recently the...
A new OCA Textiles course at level 2 (HE 5) was launched this week. I think it’s the most exciting course in the OCA textiles degree pathway suite, since it challenges students in all sorts of ways, both practically and philosophically. Called Contemporary Textiles, the course focuses on tactile and visual design ideas and...
Lucian Freud died last week, aged 88, (see BBC news report which contains an interview with one of his best know sitters, Sue Tilly). His death prompted renewed discussion about the price raised on one of his most famous paintings: Tilly the benefits supervisor, which broke the record for the highest price paid for...
Although Cy was delightfully good company and amusing, you were always aware you were in the presence of greatness.” So says Tate Curator Nicholas Cullinan in the wake of Twombly’s death. ‘There really wasn’t anyone else quite like Cy Twombly, either in art or life. His paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are like the...
An OCA student, Delia Hiscock Walker, reports on her day out at Tate Britain with a bunch of other students and the guidance of an OCA art tutor. ‘I have a lingering phrase in my head from this successful and very well organised study day on 2nd July. It’s this : ‘Just paint….’ commented...
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