This evening I went to the P.V. of Sarah Key's exhibition at Derby Museum & Art Gallery - http://www.derbymuseums.org/exhibitions/2012/4/22/sarah-key-where-i-end-and-you-begin.html. As expected a great show and well worth a visit. (Showing in the adjoining room is an exhibition of work by Derby School children 'Sea Fever'. I was one of the artists who worked with Derby schools on this project - in my case the lovely Class 4 of Asterdale Primary School - and this is also well worth a visit.
Alongside Sarah's show is a room full of exhibits of stuffed animals etc. taken from the museum's stores - part of the inspiration for Sarah's latest paintings. There were also a few display cases of butterflies.
I have been looking at vintage butterfly images as part of my day job and so these immediately caught my eye. Many of them looked as if they were made of painted paper and reminded me of the rolls of Japanese paper I had at home. I bought them in New York in 2008 intending to do some large drawings on them but haven't got round to it (..I may still do so though :)). I did do a couple of large drawings on glassine and other transparent/ translucent papers though and have been thinking a lot about layering and fragile materials in relation to my current digital drawings.
I have also found myself recently working with extremes of scale - using small petri dishes, bottles, microscope slides and acrylic blocks etc. alongside the 1 metre plus drawings. I am particularly interested in items which fit easily into the hand and are inherently suggestive of close examination and intimacy.
The above have led to some ideas relating to glassine, paper, pins and display cabinets (which will probably take at least a couple of years to develop if past experience is anything to go by...).
sounds good to me !
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