To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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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 is […]
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I make no apology for highlighting here two works with minimal actual textile content; none at all in the case of the first – a drawing which I’d like to show you because it has strong personal meaning and was instrumental in many ways in my own development as a textile artist. It’s a drawing […]
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Travelling between exhibitions often requires a certain amount of mental and physical agility. Two shows now on in London will take you from the dance halls of Montmartre to the streets of Edwardian London. Both shows are small in scale but big in ideas, with the prize going to the Courtauld Gallery’s Toulouse -Lautrec exhibition. […]
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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 the […]
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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 its […]
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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 and […]
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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 2009. […]
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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 were […]
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In Paris what is the art lover to do after having seen every Impressionist picture on offer and having spent a day traipsing around the Louvre? Well the answer is to seek out the studios of famous artists and to visit the city’s cemeteries. Gustav Moreau, the symbolist painter, left his town house to the […]
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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 in […]
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