4) Why Animals?

In the early days my career as an artist happened more by chance than any specific planning on my part. I had studied Art/ Art History as one of my “A” Levels and after leaving school continued to do the occasional architectural landscape in charcoal. In my early twenties, my parents gave me a wonderful box of 72 Faber Castell pastels, this inspired me to take my art more seriously and in 1988, whilst on maternity leave, I sold my first painting in The Great Sheffield Art Show.
I had always planned to return to my career as a State Registered Physiotherapist after having the children but bit by bit I became more involved in the art and the flexibility that working from home gave. At this time I was also very privileged to be encouraged by a friend and her husband who bought quite a number of my early paintings and made me believe that I had a saleable product. It reminded me of the essential role of “patrons” down the ages.
At this time I was continuing with architectural landscapes (have you ever noticed how many statues there are on the roof of Chatsworth House?) and also doing large flower paintings in pastel. The move into animals came about several years later when I discovered a lovely photograph of a fox in a Readers Digest publication and decided to have a go at it. It worked out incredibly well – even though I did it on such a scrap of paper that I’ve never been able to mount it up to its best advantage. If it hadn’t turned out to my satisfaction I doubt I would have ever tried another animal and certainly wouldn’t be taking part in Open Up now!
I still enjoy landscapes – in fact I’m trying a few seascapes at the moment after selling three pictures of Flamborough Head. They give me a bit of relaxation after a run of animal paintings because I can ad lib and it doesn’t have to be correct to the nearest millimetre! I still do the occasional flower painting when I feel the need to exchange my usual browns and greens for something more flamboyant.

If you would like to share something on this blog why not Email me and I will endeavour to post some of the material received and make it more interactive.

3) Inspired by snow

The recent snowfalls have inspired me to do a winter picture of a barn owl and I’ve been out with my digital camera on three occasions. We may not have this much snow for several years to come so it was an opportunity too good to miss. We had several days with keen hoar frost and clear blue skies and this colouring should work well with the complimentary orange colouring on the owl. I’ve already got a good photograph of an owl which I took several years ago at a bird of prey display. I love painting owls and find that they are very saleable, but placing it in a snowy landscape is a new challenge for me. I also collected various bits of the winter hedgerow – aniseed, cow parsley and knapweed seed heads to work directly from. I really enjoy the challenge of this sort of work and greatly admire Helen Parsley’s hedgerows but find that it is very time consuming - usually the background takes much longer than the animal which is the main subject of my picture. At the moment I have the vision for the picture, only time will if I can pull it off over the next week or two.
I do find that being enthusiastic about my subject matter is vital – I’ve got to want to do it, so this is an important factor when choosing what to do next. Obviously, when it comes to commissions I don’t have ultimate control over the choice of photo to work from or the composition, and I feel that it is very important that the client gets the painting they want. I can, however influence that decision to a certain degree and usually people welcome that input.

2) Taking a break

I’ve had a total rest from my art this week as we went away for a family holiday near Swanage, in Dorset. Looking at the winter wonderland on the Friday night, I wondered whether we would ever manage to leave Sheffield but the snow turned to rain overnight and it was fine.

I’ve always tried to have a break from my art during school holidays. Firstly, when the children were small I knew I couldn’t concentrate on detailed painting whilst keeping an eye on them, and I didn’t want to get ratty every time I was broken off. Secondly, I didn’t want them to feel that my art was more important than they are. They grow up so fast and before you know it they’re about to leave home! They’re fifteen and seventeen now but I still try not to start any new work and just potter around doing some framing and mounting. This works well for me as it stops me developing “burnout” and at the end of the holiday I can’t wait to get going again.

January to April is the time of the year when I’m busy building up a new body of work for the various exhibitions. I’ve just submitted my application for this year’s Open Up event and I’m aware that the next three months will fly by. I had a phone call just before we came away from one of the other artists in my patch, so that we could coordinate our opening days. It really does attract visitors if they can visit several venues in the same locality and I’ve enjoyed getting to know some of the artists in my area through this means. This year I’ve refreshed my artwork summary for the Open Up brochure (that’s not easy in under twenty words) and I debated long and hard what photograph to use. I finally settled on a cat portrait (it was a dog last year and an otter the year before). No doubt it will attract the cat lovers this year.

1) Open Up Sheffield - Introduction

Welcome to the brand new “Open Up Sheffield” blog – a weekly diary from the perspective of one particular artist taking part in the 2007 event.
Its not that I’m special in any way, in a mad moment I just put my head above the parapet and volunteered because it sounded fun!

Firstly, let me introduce myself. My name is Anne Turk and this is the third year that I have taken part in Open Up Sheffield. In 2005 I felt that the time had come to advertise my work more actively and I really liked what I saw of the beautiful colour brochure which is produced for the event.
I also thought that it would be rather nice to use it as an opportunity to invite friends and neighbours round so that I could explain how my artwork was produced and they could enjoy coffee and a chat at the same time.

Being able to show people how you make your art, the processes involved and the skills you acquire over time is, in my view, one of the great strengths of Open Up. Its not just about putting on an exhibition in order to sell your work but rather an opportunity to interact with interested people (I find that many of the visitors are themselves amateur craftspeople) and giving them the opportunity to handle the materials and ask lots of questions. You also get some fascinating interaction between visitors, and no two conversations are the same.
I hope that this first instalment holds something of interest for the reader – I thought next week that I’d tell you a bit about applying for the event.