Stamp Collage - Work in Progress

I've been busy in the studio today, working on another stamp collage, a fishing boat inspired by a visit to the Musee des Terre-Neuvas et de la Peche which is a fantastic little museum in Fecamp. It has a wonderful collection of items related to sea fishing, including some beautiful paintings.



I've used my sketches and photo reference material and drawn out my image onto watercolour paper. I tend to paint the background, sky etc prior to arranging the stamps to form the image, in this case the fishing boat. Stamps which feature coastlines, fish, birds etc may also be incorporated into this seascape, but I haven't yet finalised the design. I have a large stock of stamps and over a period of time have endeavoured to sort them into some sort of order so I can find what I'm looking for fairly easily. Many are kept in stock books, arranged by country, and many of the more common British stamps are in packets according to colour, so I can use them a bit like choosing a paint colour from a palette.

The tiny Chapel of Notre-Dame de Salut on the cliff top overlooking Fecamp was another amazing discovery containing more than 40 "ex-voto" (votive offerings) and the beautiful stained glass window.
I spent a while sketching and photographing some of the marine paintings, many of which were by an artist called Eugene Grandin.
I'm hoping to make a series of collages based on the theme of these rather primitive pictures, and have completed one featuring a red sailed fishing vessel typical of the area in the early part of the last century.

I'll update the blog when I've completed the latest picture. It can be quite time consuming cutting the stamps to size and piecing them together. One of my favourite bits is locating that special feature, such as the people who may be on deck or finding a stamp with a postmark which happens to fit in with any pattern - postmarks are often really useful to use on the rigging or for creating waves in the sea.

Exhibition at Taurus Crafts, Lydney in the Forest of Dean

My latest exhibition - Stamping Ground - starts tomorrow 31st October and runs until Sunday 5th December.

My work is on display in two separate rooms of Taurus Crafts wonderful cafe.
Oil paintings are in the main cafe area and the stamp collages are in the garden cafe area. All details are available on the link to Taurus Crafts on

www.tauruscrafts.co.uk - click on the Arts box on the top panel. The Exhibition is called Stamping Ground, due to the link with the postage stamps used in the collages!

You can also spend time looking round art and craft workshops, the gift shop and food shop. There's always something exciting going on and their programme of events will give details of the other activities on offer.

Impressionism in Normandy

Just got back from our fortnight's holiday in Fecamp, Normandy. It's a great area for many reasons and this Summer there's an additional reason to visit the are if you're interested in the art of the Impressionists. There is an Impressionist festival and there are many exhibitions and displays around the ares.

I was lucky to be able to visit a great exhibition which continues on until 26th September 2010 at the Musee des Beaux Arts in Rouen. It's called "Une ville pour L'Impressionnisme MKonet, Pissarro et Gauguin a Roune. As well as many paintings by these artists, including (I think) 11 of Monet's paintings of Rouen Cathedral, you can discover works by lesser known artists. It was the first time I had come across the beautiful oil paintings of Charles Frechon, Joseph Delattre and Robert Antoine Pinchon.

There are other major exhibitions in Le Havre and Dieppe, but it's worth checking visiting times and dates and beware of the French lunchtime closing hours, which I'm afraid I had somehow forgotten when in these locations!

While we were in Normandy we visited Fecamp, Etretat and Yport, all towns which have Impressionist connections and many of the small shops were displaying reproductions of the artists' work alongside contemporary artists' work.

A great area for a last minute break and to take in the wonderful coastline and the Hautes Falaises (high cliffs) made famous by the Impressionists. We managed to get a very cheap ferry crossing Dover to Dunquerque with Norfolk Line for just £49 return in August for car and family of four, but did have a 3 hour drive to reach our dstination in Fecamp.

Press coverage and Open day on Sat 7th August

As a result of the recent Open Studios festival I was interviewed by Tracy Spiers of Stroud Life and the following article appeared in today's edition of the paper.



I'm opening my studio again this Saturday 7th August from 10.30 until 6 p.m.

Also had a small piece in Stanley Gibbons stamp monthly in July. I recently made a series of Tulip collages and one of them included a stamp issued by Brazil in 1953 commemmorating an artist called Horacio Hora. As often happens to me when I'm making my collages, I go off at a tangent trying to find out more about the subject of one of the stamps I have been using! This man was obviously a very well known artist in Brazil in the early 1900s and apparently painted more than 300 paintings, but I have been unable to find out much about him, so wrote to the magazine in an attempt to get some feedback. Hoping to hear from someone, somewhere, sometime, but it hasn't happened yet! Not much on the web either and any art galleries in possession of his work seem not to have photos!



Stamp Magazine and Stamp Monthly also published articles about the Cargoes series of stamp collages in 2008.