Marian Lishman, Artist

I have taken part in Suffolk Open Studios I think for 5 or 6 years now. Unfortunately it was cancelled last year but is happening in a slightly different format this year in that there is no big printed directory listing all the artists, but instead there is a great App that lists everyone and shows who is open on each weekend. You can find it here if you haven’t already got it: http://sos.atlas-live.com

The weather is not looking that great for the weekend coming so in addition to the studio at the end of may garden being open, I will be opening up the back of my house which will include my kitchen and dining room! The idea is to have a big sale of art in the house and as I have been tidying up the studio I have realised that I have quite a large number of paintings to clear that are going to be offered at 50% off, so there will be many bargains to be had.

In addition, as I have lots of paintings out at the moment (Ferini gallery, Bent Hill Gallery and The Last Anchor in Ipswich) I found that I needed to do some more new paintings for open studios so I will have some new, small paintings up for sale. I am very excited about them as they have turned out really nicely.

I also have the new style of abstract paintings that I have started this year – I think there are 5 in that collection – and I will be working on one during the weekend.

I have also been making some more greeting cards which will be on sale too.

There will also be a display showing how I create the fluid work – it’s not really possible to do much in the way of a demo on those as they need a dust free location to dry and with people coming and going that is unlikely to happen. However, I do have a couple that are waiting to have their resin coating applied so they are still works in progress.

If you are planning to come and visit then just turn up any time between 11am and 5pm and come round the side of the house. There will be plenty of signs.

There will be hand sanitiser available and only one set of people in the studio at a time.

For a fair while I have wanted to start painting some multi-layered abstracts in a similar style to some I have done in the past. There are a few artists that I admire who do this kind of painting – in particular I could name Jane Davies (based in the US), Boo Compton and Patricia Lomax (both Suffolk artists). I love their style of work and have been waiting for a while to get a chance to spend time doing art like that.

Now that my son has gone back to school again after Lockdown 3, I have been able to spend some more time i the studio again and have started on some of these canvases. I have a few on the go – a couple of them I have been working on for a while – and they do take quite a while to finish as they need so many layers and iterations until I am happy with the result. So far I have finished two of them, although the first one was not totally in the style I was aiming for.

I hope to have some of them done by this summer and all the ones that I finish will of course be listed on the website. The first one finished is this one:

I’m really happy how it turned out although I think people will be surprised as to how much of a deviation it is from my fluid acrylic style. It may not be to everyone’s taste but I believe it is important to learn and develop and pursue new avenues in art every now and again. It is not completely dissimilar to some old paintings I did a number of years ago for example this one from 2011:

It is interesting to play with mark making and layering and using different sized strokes to create the final effect.

This year is still a bit of an unknown. I have had more exhibitions cancelled in the next few months. Things are unlikely to get back to any kind of normality before June at least and because events take a lot of planning, there may still be more cancellations.

I will be taking part in Suffolk Open Studios again this year. I’ll be opening my studio/garden/drive for the last weekend in June and will be doing some painting for any visitors to see plus will have a display of all the paintings I have at home.

Looking back at my last blog post I now can’t actually remember what the exciting opportunity was going to be! No doubt covid put a stop to it whatever it was!

We are nearing the end of the coronavirus lockdown period that was imposed in March and things have changed massively since my last blog post.

I had quite a number of exhibitions lined up between March and September and all of them have now been cancelled which has obviously seriously limited any sales that I can make. In fact all of my exhibitions tend to happen in that period so there is only one possible exhibition left in November for this year which hopefully will go ahead. I will look to see if there are other events that I can take part in but I don’t expect things to return to normal until next year at least.

The Arts in general have taken a big hit and I just hope that the galleries can actually survive this period of closure as I know some are worried about whether they will be able to reopen at all.

For me, I have not been able to do too much in terms of new paintings as I have been home schooling my 6 year old. He has now gone back to school for a few weeks so I have had time to do a few bits. I finished the large commissioned wave painting which ended up looking really great after a few reworks. the thing with commission paintings as opposed to ones that I do myself is that you are working to a specific goal which may mean reworking paintings to suit the client, which is fine, but as this happens 99% of the time there is an extra cost to any commissioned paintings of 20% on top of standard prices which you can find here.

I am thinking of having a front drive sale of paintings but need to combine times when I have all my paintings here, the weather is good and my son is at his Dad’s! That may be some time in August and I will publicise it on social media if and when it happens.

I have been looking at doing some pendulum pour paintings so will be starting these in the next couple of weeks. I’ve been looking at the consistency of the paint to pour through and keep going without dripping. I love the regular patterns that these produce (a bit like the old spirograph!) so will video these as I do them.

In the meantime I have an exciting opportunity coming up next week (more details to follow) and will hopefully have a few small paintings in a display exhibition in Chelmsford in August – I’ll add that to the events if it happens.

Hoping that everyone is safe and well and we are all able to exhibit and meet soon!