A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of teaching my 2 day Colour Stories abstract art class at Elm Farm Studio, Colchester. A fantastically responsive and enthusiastic group of ladies eager to learn and experiment. We had so much fun splatting and spraying and sponging over our two days together.
SUCH a treat to do something in real life and not online!

Probably the best way to sum up the experience is in the words of my students:

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I recently had the treat of taking part in the Mark Eanes Colour & Design 3 day Intensive. I learnt so much and know you'd like to hear all about it!
I’ve always been a fan of colour, as you probably know, and I knew the basics of the colour wheel (primary, secondary, tertiary, complements) but this course took me WAY beyond and into a whole new adventure that I realised I was only scratching the surface of! Prismatic hues, chromatic and achromatic greys, analogous hues were all new things to me.

What is a Prismatic Hue?
The purest, most saturated and intense colours. Red, yellow and blue, and the rest of the 12 colours they mix on the colour wheel.

What is a Muted Hue?
These are not as saturated or intense as prismatic as they have another colour, white, black or grey mixed into them.

What is a Chromatic Grey?
These have little saturation or intensity, they can be very dark or very light or middle tones and they aren’t necessarily grey!

Day 2 and 3 we looked at composition and layout of art, looking at artists like Mondrian. We used the colour swatches we’d made to make designs of our own, based around the colour categories and relationships that we were learning about. Obviously it’s only when you try using your new knowledge that you test if you understand it!!

Here are my results

2 pictures per colour group. Both with a wide range of hue (colour) but then 1 had to be with a wide range of value (light & dark) and the other with a narrow range of value. Can you tell which is which? And can you see what difference it makes?
Which colour group and rules are you most drawn to? Does that surprise you?

By the way Mark told us a great tip for checking value, which is viewing through a black and white filter on your phone - narrow range of value should look very similar - see this example.

I think the biggest things to come out of this workshop for me is not that I now know clever colour vocabulary but that I discovered new colours and colour relationships that I love and that really excite me. I’m always on the hunt for vibrancy and have leant towards the more pure colours in the past (the prismatic) as I love their intensity, but actually the muted hues and even some of the more saturated chromatic greys, and how they sit with certain other colours, gave me a whole new avenue to explore!

We have ended the course with a whole load of extra exercises to continue with and things to discover. I actually finished realising that I both needed to harness this new passion but also to put boundaries on it, otherwise I could see myself just colour mixing all my days and never achieving anything else!

Click HERE for a link to Mark Eanes website for future 3 day and 6 weeks courses.
Click HERE to subscribe to my newsletter to follow where this adventure takes me next!

And I'd love to hear in the comments below which colour combinations you are most drawn to from the ones I've shared!

A few weeks ago I arrived in North Carolina. I was about to meet some special friends face to face for the 1st time, explore a new country and attend a fabulous conference of artists, where I was excited to be teaching 3 days of workshops. It’s something I’ve dreamt about and been working towards for a couple years and had finally arrived.
However, this dream didn’t become a reality and actually quickly turned into a pretty nasty experience. On arriving at the airport my passport was confiscated, I was ushered into the immigration department, interrogated, several fingerprints and mug shots taken, searched rather invasively by a scary lady, held in custody and sent back to the UK on the next flight home. I wasn’t allowed my passport until I was on UK soil and its now stamped with ‘refused entry to the USA’.

I had enquired about visas before making plans and booking my flight, way back in February. Following all the advice I was given I applied for an ESTA Visa Waiver. I stated that I was going to America on business as an artist. My application was ACCEPTED and I thought I’d done all I needed to do.
It was only on arriving in America that I was informed that this wasn’t the right visa requirement.

Then why was my application accepted in the first place? Why didn’t they reject it and tell me the right type of visa I needed, while I had enough time to do something about it? Why is this in any way my fault or fair?

A baffling, traumatic & exhausting experience. 17hrs flying in a 22hr window. 40hr traveling with a diversion to the American embassy who wouldn’t let me in the door to plead my case. Gutted doesn’t cover it!

Since returning I have heard of a multitude of other creatives that this has happened to and here is an article explaining something of the issue: 'Why are artists being denied entry into the US? How did it come to this and who do we blame?'

But the story does not and must not end there!
The amazing thing was that I was able to still teach my workshops at this conference in America via Zoom, from my back garden in the UK! AND I was paid as planned, so my expenses were covered after all!

I learnt how to teach using Zoom and was thrilled that it actually worked - a new tool in my tool bag! I had a fantastic facilitator in the room to be my hands and feet for each session - they set everything up and reassured people, we dialogued through Facebook messenger with photos and ideas of alterations as the days when on. My face was beamed into the room larger than life on the big screen where I was able to share my powerpoint slides and videos and do demonstrations as planned. We were even able to have a roaming camera so I could be ‘taken’ close to people and art work and join in with group discussion as if I was there in the room.
It was an interesting experience straddling 2 continents for the week - they are 5 hours behind us in the UK, so their 9-5 was my 2 - 10pm but it was fine. I’m still receiving feedback from my students on what they’ve learnt and are now putting into practice from what I taught them in those classes.

This was an ordeal that knocked the stuffing out of me, it was costly and I was robbed of the incredible week in America that I had planned, but this whole experience has actually put a fire in me to not accept this as a dead end. I’m more passionate than ever to travel the world as an artist - sharing my art and inspiring creativity in others.

I had an exciting day last Saturday, teaching a room full of 24 grown ups how to play with paint. And today I’ve been reading their feedback forms!

But, you know the comment that grabbed my attention the most, was from someone on the actual day, that took me by surprise. I can’t remember her exact words but she was basically expressing her appreciation that I would be willing to share my ‘secrets’ with everyone. She thanked me for my generosity in not keeping my art processes to myself! Isn’t that lovely?!

Should I be worried that people might try to copy my style, or might use my ideas to make better pictures than mine?

What I do is incredibly simple - I’ve taught most of it to children as young as 4, I’ve shared it with rooms of 150 people all in one go and it’s still been effective. My processes have come about through experimentation and play, through trial and error, but most of all through playing with paint and having fun.

I didn’t invent stencilling, or splatting paint, or building up layers, or using circles in ones work. Maybe if this was it - if this was going to be my specific style for ever, then I’d feel a bit more protective and guarding of sharing it with people (I don’t know)...

BUT I’m just getting started! I have plans to go much deeper and further and crazier with my paint playing. In fact, I would be most disappointed if my work did stay the same from now on - I’m hungry to keep developing, to keep growing and learning.

If I can impart a sense of fun and playfulness in people’s creativity, if I can help to free people up to focus on enjoying the process rather than stressing over the results, then I feel the risk of sharing 'all my secrets' is one worth taking.

Last weekend I led a 3 hr Colour Song abstract art workshop and I thought you'd enjoy hearing about what we got up to.

We started with a couple of warm up exercises – drawing to music and then thinking in colours. I was thrilled that everyone threw themselves straight into the activities, daring to try something different, trusting me to focus on the process over results.

I then set about taking the group through the techniques I used to create this painting called 'Piece of Peace', step by step, layer upon layer upon layer.

Everyone went home with their own beautiful handcrafted painting!

This time last week I was at Butlins Skegness working as the artist in residence at Spring Harvest #SH2018. It was an amazing, stretching, encouraging, very busy week and I loved it! I got to work in the Creative Arts Team alongside the talent of Kees Kraayenoord from Holland, 4front theatre, NGM dancers and the fantastic Luke Aylen (who heads up creativity across all 4 SH breaks), in front of an audience of 3500! I thought you'd like to hear what I got up to.

Next thing on my programme was my favourite part of the whole week, creating 6 foot paintings live in front of 3500 people in the big top each night! I love working big and working messy, I love combining worship and the prophetic with paint, I didn't feel nervous I experienced a tangible grace as I co-created with the Holy Spirit for my Daddy God and did what he made me to do! I was projected live onto the big screen on and off through the meeting for folks to see, and hopefully my visual/creative response to the biblical themes of the day helped people engage further in their worship of God. Once dry, the pictures were hung up around the venue.

I'm an abstract painter and 'sing with colours', I studied and prayed about the themes for each day in advance of the week so that I could help people engage with God and with the teaching, through my art. Each night I started with a title, a colour palette, a plan of which shapes and details I would bring in related to the theme and then worked whilst praising and praying, partnering with the Holy Spirit to discover where these ideas would take me and what picture would result. Clicking on each painting will take you to my Etsy shop where you'll find an explanation of the picture as well as being able to purchase a print if you wish.

Another significant part of my week were the Big Start sessions each morning at 9am – all age 30min meetings in the big top using drama, art, dance and music to engage with the focus of the day. We had a fantasy theme running through this so I dressed as a butterfly art pixie alongside a unicorn, some trolls and other fantasy dressed folk from the fab Creative Arts Team. I planned, prepared and led the art activities each day for ~100 children, each activity was stuck to a huge letter spelling out KING. My highlight was rolling paint onto the hands of tiny little children.

On the Tuesday afternoon I decided to do one of my BIG LIVE ART pieces on the floor of Skyline, the shopping arena in Butlins, to music. Although I painted live each night in the big top, this gave people of all ages the chance to come up really close to see me working and chat with me, and hopefully I inspired some 'wanna be' artists to give it a try. Here is a timelapse movie of the creation of this picture. Music is by the fabulous Kees Kraayenoord - one of my favourite songs from the week: 'Saviour's Song' (used with permission).

On the Wednesday afternoon I offered an abstract art workshop called 'Sing with colour' and 146 people turned up! It was like feeding the 5000 trying to find everyone a place to sit and to make the resources stretch to double the expected number. Everyone did a great job of embracing the 'thinking in colours' and 'drawing with eyes closed' exercises. I intentionally whetted appetites, leaving people wanting more, sending them away with a desire to continue experimenting. I was thrilled to see the results of their playing with paint.

On the Thursday evening as I was praying before I painted, I felt God nudge me to offer my picture as an interactive creative element on this occasion. After dialogue with the event hosts we agreed that during the ministry time at the end of the evening once I'd completed my piece we would invite people to respond to the challenge of surrendering their all to God by coming up and putting their thumb print on my picture, like a physical statement of individual commitment. As people queued to do this I prayed for a pouring down of heaven over them as they gave their all afresh. It was a really poignant and humbling moment. On returning home my 6 year old helped me count the thumb prints using kidney beans - we discovered that over 230 people had responded that night.

At the end of a wonderful week of flinging, throwing, splatting, dribbling and flicking paint to my heart's content, I left a few marks behind! I had so so many people come up asking me about my work, thanking me for the impact my art had had on their week, interested and inspired by a way of working that they had not seen before. I've not done anything on this scale before but genuinely found grace and courage to REALLY enjoy myself!

I recently got to spend time painting with around 60 kids in the children's work at City Church Cambridge. There were two church services, the first group painted about PEACE and the second painting about JOY.

I shared with the children that God made us with creative imaginations. We asked God to take us in our imaginations to somewhere full of his peace (group 1) or joy (group 2) so that we could know these things better. We imagined smells and tastes, colours and shapes, lines and marks.

I then led the children through several layers of mark making in groups, using different tools and techniques that replicate my own paintings. Pen lines, paint squirts, squeegees, hand prints, stamps and stencils.

I had a fantastic time at Arbury Primary School last week and wanted to share with you what I've been up to.

Each year the school spend a whole week studying an artist and one of their paintings. This year they took it a step further - they invited the artist into the school to paint the picture in front of them. That artist was me!

My picture was called 'Take my hand' and was inspired by one of their favourite songs 'Right to be Loved' by Song Academy. I started painting the picture on stage in their assembly, projected onto the screen with all 450 of them singing along! I worked on the picture all morning as classes took turns to take a closer look and I invited each child to draw a circle round the edge. Here is the video (using a different song for copyright reasons).

Once finished, my painting was hung along with other examples of my work in an exhibition in the school entrance. I created a montage of some of the layers used in the picture to aid follow up written and art work.

Next I visited each year group to introduce myself properly. I showed them my tools and materials, they asked me lots of very good questions, and I planned with them the pictures we would create later in our workshops.
I gave them the titles of Happy, Love, Peace, Kindness, Excited, Thankful & Hope, and they decided which colours, shapes, lines and marks would suit their theme. 

Each year group (60 children) collaborated on a giant painting which they created in 6 groups of 10 that worked on 6 layers over the course of an hour, using the same techniques, tools and materials I use.
1. pencil lines & squirting paint 2. squeegees & handprints 3. sticker stencils with sponges
4. shape prints 5. sticker stencils with sponges 6. pencil lines & squirting paint

I videoed them at work from above and created mini timelapse movies for them, set to music like mine.
Links to these are on the school website side menu bar here

We ended up with 7 big beautiful paintings each measuring 1.5m square.

I provided suggestions of cross curricular lessons that teachers could do during the week in response to my visit and was thrilled to hear of the extra work I inspired - a couple of boys choreographed a dance, children discussed what colours different emotions would look like, one class bought a canvas to paint together, another responded using batik. Parents were talking about art activities developing at home throughout the week, and even some of the teachers were prompted to start painting in their spare time!

I was definatley in need of a rest by the end of the week, but it was such an encouraging & rewarding experience