Happy New year and here’s to a wonderful, happy, healthy and creative 2022. We thought we would start the year with a bang of positivity and expression and see how you use colour in your work. The theme was very open to interpretation and the breath and scope of the work submitted was from all perspectives. It has been such a joy to curate as the colour jumped from the screen and into the zine. We also launched our first open call for a series of physical shows of postcards with the same theme which will be running up and down the UK this year. Enjoy. Watch out as we will be re-running the postcard open call later this year. If you have a venue that could host the Colour show then get in touch as we plan to move the show to multiple venues.
Jenna and Nichola
Artist name: Lorcan Cassidy
Title: Sweet Nightmares
Description: My use of colour is employed to create a sense of the uncanny. In order to do so, I combine brightly coloured elements with macabre visions. This brings about a duality, an unstable state captured on the page.
Instagram: @areyoualright_lorcan_art
Artist name: Jonathan Marc Crawford
Title: Terra
Description: As a painter, I've been working with simple arrangements of shapes and flat colour to create harmonious compositions. This has led to the use of screen printing in a similar way. The result here was achieved by cropping from larger compositions, which themselves had gone through several versions to achieve the warm effect I wanted. I've chosen two options, one calm and the other dynamic.
Instagram: @jonathancrawfordartist
Artist name: Alexandra Buxbaum
Title: The Power of Red
Description: Colours have a direct influence on our behaviour; some of the cooler hues such as green and blue have a calming effect, are relaxing and enhance creativity. The warmer colours such as red, yellow, and orange evoke higher arousal emotions, and activate the survival mode. Within cultures, there are also different associations and meanings with colours; In English you are green with envy, in German it is yellow. Purple has been associated with wealth and royalty in some cultures, but is the colour of mourning in others. Red has a range of symbolic meaning, both negative and positive. Red represents romance in a flower shop, and also symbolizes love, health, and vigour. On the flip side, red is universally used to convey warnings such as its use on red lights, fire trucks, and stop signs, and also conveys anger. Red draws attention like no other colour and radiates a strong, powerful energy.
Instagram: @buxbaumphoto
Artist name: Sam LEE
Title: Spring on Fire (series)
Description: installation printmaking art work interacting in the landscape with light and nature intervening to transform playful woodcut mark making . A filter to transform the world for just a moment, projecting colour and drawing into the already colourful landscape. I see colour like music. It is the same idea in my view, it has to be composed.
Instagram: @samleeartfire3
Artist name: Kevin Devonport
Title: Another Rubbish Painting
Description: I have used the theme of consumerism in a number of paintings. The addiction to buy products is the most prominent addiction in contemporary society but also the least recognisable. The bright colours of packaging are used to attract and tantalise the consumer to buy and ironically is then immediately turned into waste.
Instagram: @the_art_of_no_noise
Artist name: Thore Sundermeyer
Title: Meditation blau (mini-cut)
Description: When it comes to the colour issue, it appeals to every artist.
Because colour is a primal element in painting. This picture is called meditation blau
(mini-cut) because a two-meter canvas was cut into small pieces. His bigger brother
was already shown in a museum.
Instagram: @artethore
Artist name: Kelly Umpleby
Title: Untitled
Description: Using photography as a process of documentation, it has allowed me to change the visual perception of a painting and to delve further into materiality
Instagram: @ke11_u_artits
Artist name : Nichola Jane Art
These paintings draw in ideas of the darker side of power, nature, and identity, mixed inks and oil on canvas.
Jenna Fox
@jennafoxartist
"Disruption"
My work shouts colour. But I started to experiment by limiting my work to only four colours as a nod to the four humours of medieval medicine that were thought to rule the body and its aliments. For this I used red blood) and yellow (urine) but swapped bile (green) for orange and pink. I set rules for my self for a series of paintings using this method. The colour had to be block (no mixing) and not touch. It was a liberating process.
Artist name: ANN KOPKA
Title: Puncho Punchas Punchat
Description: ‘Puncho Punchas Punchat’ comes out of my engagement with the transformation of discarded and disregarded everyday ephemera. Comprising colourful paper hole punches on an acrylic abstract background it echoes my fascination in the relationships between geometry, repetition, colour and pattern, in the shapes and structures prevalent in abstract art.
Instagram: @annkopka
Artist name: Lily Dean
Title: The Living Room
Description: In my current project living room, I am also responding to a significant British / global experience.; the pandemic and experiences of living through Lockdown, and the feelings of claustrophobia involved. I have been inspired by the symbols used on COVID awareness leaflets, (for example, the diagrams of washing hands and hazard tape). I started by wanting to create an installation that showed a metamorphosis from human into furniture, As I felt as though I was becoming part of the furniture. I also wanted to explore the themes of Alice in Wonderland syndrome or the idea of getting bigger and smaller. The room represents an inner space, as well as a physical space. To get an idea of the overwhelming confusing element of the current times I researched 1970s prints and textiles and op art as a visual metaphor, to convey a personal yet universal experience of claustrophobia and confusion.
Instagram: @lily.dean.art
Artist name: Susan Thompson
Title: I have been here before
Description: Colour features strongly in my work, so I was drawn to this challenge to create an image on a small scale. My process of working is through improvisation and just going with my intuition, so I did not approach it with any idea in mind. I just had the thought of using colour and allowed it to take shape.
Instagram: @susanpatthompson
Artist name: Susan Plover
Title: Every Picture Tells A Story.
Description: A new piece with a vintage postcard ground. The sepia scene is juxtaposed with a subversive found image in colour. The palette of the piece is a vehicle alluding to the age of the original lido image from the 1950's when sepia was being hand coloured as a nod to modernism.
Instagram: @susanplover7639
Artist name: Eric Zhang
Title: My travel
Description: These pics were taken when I was travelling before Covid, in Morocco and Singapore, quite a good memory for me.
Instagram: @eric.tt
Artist name: Tess Baxter aka Tizzy Canucci
Title: The Very Discrete is Now Visible
Description: This is a still from a piece of video art. It was made at an event in the virtual world of Second Life, however, it is not just a recording, but an interlayering of multiple images that create unintended combinations of visuals. Editing reveals those combinations of shape and colour - a serendipitous exploration, where it's about consciously setting up chance encounters.
Instagram: @tess_baxter_
Artist name: Elleanna Chapman
Title: PINKtrospection
Description: What does it mean for pink to be a 'girly' colour? As my practice has developed, I have been consistently come back to the colour pink as a point of interest. Bright and in your face, it carries both nostalgic and political connotations for me, creating some sort of pathway between childhood and gender experience. In 'PINKtrospection' I use pink materials and collage to explore the physical and abstract attributes of a woman's psyche and the pinkness inside my head.
Instagram: @elleannac
Artist name: Carrieanne Vivianette
Title: Whichever Way.
Description: This painting is created through a process of improvisation, in starting, there was no understanding of the result - an acrylic painting, drawn and painted in the calm of a disregarded TV set.
Instagram: @cvivartsfineart
Artist name: Sandra Haney
Title: Landscape 1 ( Coddiwomple)
Description: These monoprints were created as part of my Coddiwomple series. Coddiwomple means to travel purposefully towards a vague destination, which describes my process. The printmaking process is purposeful, the resulting image was not predetermined, but arrived at one step at a time, purposefully juxtaposing and overlaying shapes and colours.
Instagram: @Sandra.haney
Artist name: Anthony Carey
Title: Hashtag Colour
Description: A response to the theme of colour this postcard size piece is a recollection of light dancing through the stained glass church windows seen in my youth.
Instagram: @acareycreate
Artist name: Matthew Exley
Title: #DAEE7E
Description: Currently the focus of my work uses repeated lines or concentric circles of equal weight to explore natural colour transitions; through the use of emulsion on MDF. Within my present pieces, the focus is solely on the colours and their inherent qualities. The biggest issue I had to overcome was achieving an even colour transition through mixing paint, avoiding optical trickery.
Instagram: @mexleyart
Artist name: Sean Worrall
Title: "Blinkered Arcade One and Two"
Description: Two pieces of postcard sized work painted today as a direct response (of the first decent day of the year in terms of light and seeing colour). A pair of paintings painted together. Colour, the use of bold colour is a prominent part of my work, colour is the language and communication is (very) important
Instagram: @seanworrall_01
Artist name: Allison Tanenhaus
Title: Pastel Peaks
Description: Dimensional effects, all made with apps on my smartphone :)
Instagram: @atanenhaus
Artist name: Zarina Keyani
Title: Somewhere In The City
Description: 'Somewhere In The City' is part of an abstract set of paintings and studies exploring the city where I live and work. Notable to Birmingham are the many green areas and open spaces within the city which are represented in this painting. Sadly these are diminishing as the council sells off its green spaces to building contractors.
Instagram: @ZarinaKeyani
Artist name: Moisés Hergueta
Title: bloody minded communion
Description: Belonging to a series of works, which I have been doing for several years, related to balance. In this specific case, the predominant colour is red, blood red, guts red, human red ...
Instagram: @moiseshergueta_
Artist name: Ciara Brady
Title: Colours in turmoil
Description: Concept is on the power and freedom of relinquishing control, the piece creates itself. I am simply another tool in the selection and mixing and pouring of the paint. The rest is purely unique art, magical and in the moment. The piece is was an experiment in the art of loosening our grip on and fascination with control. It was empowering to work alongside myself as an observer and let intuition guide the creation of the piece. Obstacles to overcome were the idea of striving for perfection, the desire to control my art as I control other fascists of my life. The reward was the freedom of trusting in the creative process.
Instagram: @kikibrady
Artist: Michaela Hall
Title: 'Milkman' (2021)
Description: This analogue collage created from popular culture magazine clippings explores the relationship of colour in images depicting liquid and metallic surfaces and how this can be used compositionally to create different metaphors for the senses.
Instagram: @michaela_hall_artist
