Category Archives: Blog

Grant award Arts Council England

I am delighted to announce that I have been awarded a Developing your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England.

My project ‘Investigating new ways of creating with natural and recycled materials in a historical environment’ will enable me to take time out from my normal work to focus on experimenting and challenging myself as an artist.

I am grateful to Arts Council England for supporting me to do this. I also wish to say thank you to ‘a space’ arts @aspacearts, Southampton City Council @SotonCC and Tudor House and Garden @tudorhouseandgarden for providing support and encouragement to follow my dreams.

Phil Gibby, Area Director, Arts Council England, South West, said:

“We’re delighted to support Jacqueline Rolls through our Developing Your Creative Practice funding programme, thanks to National Lottery players.

This investment will give Jacqueline time to focus on her creative development as a willow sculpture artist, to experiment, and to take creative risks.

At the Arts Council we believe that creativity fulfils us as individuals and helps us to better understand the world, which is why we’re so pleased to back Jaqueline in developing her creative potential.”

A summer of art shows 2021

It is a real pleasure to be able to spend time over the summer showing some of my creations at different art exhibitions .

The Hampshire Open Art Studios is a special time for artist in Hampshire, taking place in the last two weeks of August it is a time when so many artist come out to play and I am delighted that I will be joining two shows this year,

Once again I am returning to the Southern Nature Art Show which is moving to a new premises at Cams Hill School in Portchester near Fareham

I am aso joining with artist at Great Abshot Barn located on the edge of Titchfield Common it is such a a interesting venue and gardens to visit and I am so pleased to have been invited to join them, for more details on this and my other shows that are being planned for the autumn keep an eye on the exhibitions page or follow my Facebook page where I will be posting regular updates

Working with new art gallerys

I am really pleased to be able to share that some of my work is now being sold via two Hampshire Art Gallery’s.

The Wild Art Gallery in Wickham near Fareham owned by the amazing wildlife artist Sarah Featherstone and

Gallery 7 located at 7,The Mall, Burley located in the heart of the New Forest owned by the well known landscape artist Paul Dolman.

I am also pleased that several of my paintings and sculptures are currently out on show in a private creative works space in Southampton, its great that people get to see and enjoy my work in a unusual space .

Shine at the Yellow Edge Gallery

Several of my willow sculptures and paintings are on show at the Shine exhibition which opened during the first week of November, the exhibition has not gone online for the rest of the month. They are planning to reopen again in December as soon as it is safe to do so and will stay open until the 20th of December

Address- Stoke Road Gosport, Hants

https://yellowedgegallery.com/

Willow poppy sculpture unveiled at the Army Flying Museum

I am so proud to have been invited to be part of this exhibition at the Army Flying Museum near Stockbridge in Hampshire.

Just to give you a sense of scale my willow poppy and metal sculptures are 1 meter in width, which shows you how many knitted medals, poppies there are alongside it.

Such a colossal effort from the museum to have so many contributions to an amazing project. I can’t wait to visit and see the exhibition in the flesh when they reopen.

Arts residency supported by talent development grant

News

I am really pleased to be able to share that I have been awarded a talent development grant from a space’ arts, the funds will enable me to work with a mentor and photographer to help me to record the experience. I will be creating new work as an Artist in Residence at the wonderful Furzey Gardens in the New Forest. I will be starting my time there at the end of September and creating work through the winter months.

I will be keeping a record of the experience and sharing this, details to follow.

Hampshire Open Arts Studios – The Keepers

I’m so looking forward to tomorrow , The Hampshire Open Arts Studios is happening over the next couple of weeks and weve now taken over the whole pub with all of artwork , 9 artist in one space do need a lot of room after all.

We are lucky at the Dancing Man Brewery that the public can view the artwork when the pub is open. However we wanted to be available so over the next two weekends we will be available from 12pm – 4pm

Here are some of the other artworks being shown for more details https://www.facebook.com/TheKeepersArtistCollective/

Work on display at the Dancing Man Brewery in Southampton

It so great to see how many Southampton cafes and pubs are supporting local artist in the area by displaying their work, as more local businesses including small local art gallerys are emerging and creatives are working together to put on events that are accessible to everyone. The fact that Southampton has a thriving arts community in its midst is starting to become more known.

The Art Cafe and the Metrics Cafe have both been happy to show my work previously and now I am happy to say that the Dancing Man Brewery which is know locally as the Wool House and the Old Titanic Museum is now showing some of my work .

Such a lovely building sympathetically converted the owner Mandy told me that the majority of the conversion has been designed so as to lift out almost like a stage set so as to course no damage to the structure to the building. http://www.dancingmanbrewery.co.uk/ Ive always been a fan of interesting spaces as well as historical spaces so I am thrilled to display my work there

Link

As with all creations it can sometimes be difficult to complete a artwork especially when challenging yourself this happens to us all, for me creating my urban paint and pen creations can be the most difficult of challenges. It is often easy to start but harder to finish and is very much the case when I am pushing myself in a new direction as in the case of using a new colour scheme. Back in December 2014 I started a new colour-full work, my stumbling block came when I was half way through the piece, so I put it away, sometimes its about a emotional space as much as a physical one and this is reflected in my art work. I am sure that this must say something about my psyche as I have now completed Fred and am now happily creating in colour again.

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Ive been busy again creating new individual works inspired by line work series, smaller and more compact these new art works have been fun to create.

Keeping motivated , getting together with other creatives

It is often easy to become isolated during the creative process and if your not careful this can lead to the old creative block.This is very much the case when much of your income is derived from your creative work.

Well I don’t know about you but I have definitely gone this one at different times… so how to overcome this….. always a difficult one as we all create in different ways …. I am someone who always has a different project on the go be it creating my own work or facilitating creativity in others . It is so easy to spend so much energy on projects that you just simply exhaust your self self preservation kicks in and well.

Ive tried many different ways to get the creative brain cells working again from starting a creative diary to taking a rest then spending some time as a arts tourist , visiting gallerys , reading a good book going to see some live bands etc …. do something totally different from paint balling to rock climbing and testing your comfort threshold …….

On the upside once this has happened and you have come out the other side you realise that the best thing to do is to factor in some relaxation time when your head is next immersed in a project and allow yourself to do something totally different every now and again.

My solution is not to fight it just except that we all need down times the other thought is that you are totally reliant in your artistic endeavor to earn a wage

Exploring my creations responding to a jungle theme

Developing on a initial inspiration and developing a theme

I am often asked about how I create my work so I thought that I would share some of my creative processes. The inspiration for this series started life with a photograph of the undergrowth in my garden.

photograph of my jungle dreams painting created in acrylics using predominatly greens yellows reds blues and whote

Jungle dreams acrylics on canvas

For the initial image I drew inspiration from the shapes and colors wishing to develop and enhance these to create a work that inspired a imaginary magical world revealing hidden characters within.

photograph of painting leaves designs imaginary landscape - penwork multicoloured

Leaves design colored line work

For this second piece I was inspired to create a work inspiration. I started the process by placing a transparent paper on the top of the painting I then drew around the shapes that appealed to me, I then replicated the section as a mirror image joining the sections together to create a new starting point for my next design.

photograph of my wilderness painting painted in coloured sections created in acrylic paint in white canvas

Wilderness imagined

For the final piece I was then inspired to use color to place further emphasis on different sections thus creating my leaves design.

Creative craft

Over the last few years I have explored with and very much enjoyed working with willow and i always find mylef being drawn back to using it , it is such a great sculptural material and being organic has its own memory , time and patience are needed and must be given to understand its intrinsic properties . Over the last few months much have my time has been taken up teaching others how to use it to create willow lanterns the one pleasure as well as frustration is that creating willow lanterns is temporary medium to work in .

I have recently been thinking about creating structures that have a much longer life span and have been considering using other mediums to strengthen the paper, or to replace it with canvas or another material, as I will have some free time I have decided that the time will be well spent experimenting.

Freeing up your creativity- abstract freestyle experimentation 1.

For this approach I have found that it is better to work on several pieces at a time with the theory that at least one will work out and that you can always creative new work from the ones that you are not so pleased with when you finish.

I decided to try out a similar method of working, using a different pallet of colors for each piece and keeping a very loose theme in mind .

I decided to use acrylic paints I was prepared to use up quite a lot of paint You could equally use this method with a much cheaper paint on board,or use colored sand and chalks and take a photograph, it really doesn’t matter

I also wanted to get away from being finicky and so chose to large brushes,and spoons, droppers and scrapers and a flat service – on this occasion I used the kitchen tops surface as it was near to running water but a covered floor would do just as well.

Creating textural based artworks 1

Many of my art works are quite textual in a appearance I love to work in layers, changing and adapting as it is created.

I am often asked how I create my work and although there is no one method I thought that I would start to share some of the methods I use with you.

The first approach links to building up a textual base.

Much of my naturalistic work is based on one at least one photograph that I have taken. I always use my own photographs for this style of working unless I am provided with images by a a client.

To complete more to follow soon