My Art Residency in Minehead

At Easter I spent the week as the artist in residence at a conference in Butlins, Minehead and thought I'd share with you what I got up to.
There were three main parts to my role. 1. to provide all age activities for the morning programme called the BIG START. 2. to lead an art workshop for the guests one afternoon and 3. to paint live in the evening session. I also had the opportunity of selling my art and merchandise in the bookshop.

BIG START

The creative team leading this morning programme had to dress in school uniform to fit the week's theme – hence the pigtails! I based my activities around the idea of a graffiti wall and each morning added a new word. I'd learnt from the previous year to keep things super simple as there would be a large number of kids, about 10 minutes to do things and it was too loud to give any explanation, alongside the songs, games and drama also happening. We used chalks, made handprints, created collage and sketched.

ART WORKSHOP

Being the only artist and only art workshop on offer that week, it's not that surprising that 142 people turned up on the afternoon of my class! So the first thing we did, as people queued to get in and to collect their materials, was to cut everything in half!
I took people through a few loosening up exercises before leading them step by step through some of the techniques and layers that I use in my abstract art. It was lots of fun and I got some wonderful feedback as people queued at the end to show me what they'd made.

LIVE ART

Each evening, next to the stage, I got to paint HUGE pictures to live music. Working so big and with limited time lent itself nicely to expressive, messy work. I barely used a brush or palette, I just threw the paint on the canvas roll and manipulated it with a shower squeegee and sponges.
There was a camera over my shoulder a lot of the time, with a live feed to the large screens either side of the venue, with images of me painting interspersed with footage of the 3000+ audience and the band. I was having so much fun that I was mostly able to block this out of my mind and just get on with what I was doing.

Each evening I left my paintings to dry over night, then in the morning I hung them from the bleachers. The pictures are available for guests (and anyone else) to purchase as poster prints in my Etsy shop (click each image below for a link).

TELL ME

MEET ME HALFWAY

TOGETHER

A FRIEND IN HIGH PLACES

HOPE

The original pieces were taken home, and will be stretched and exhibited in my Open Studio event in July, apart from one which has already sold and is about to travel to it's new home in Cornwall.


A full on, tiring week that I THOROUGHLY enjoyed!