Overdue Blog Update

Where do the years go?
Check out my tuition pages at the "Society for All Artists" website (put my name in the tuition search box) New venues - Ashurst, Shoreham, Worthing, and Littlehampton.
O.K. I'm now active on Facebook as a PAGE - Marcus Finch BA (I don't accept friend requests as I don't have the time to see what you had for breakfast!)
and just started on Youtube with the idea of developing online demonstrations and tutorials.
Here are a selection of my recent works

Art Demonstration - Cumbrian Landscape in Mixed Media with Dramatic Sky - Henfield Art Club

The reference picture was taken by my son Alex in infra red and is a stunning photo.

This was my interpretation using oil pastel resisit with very strong indigo watercolour over feeding in purple lake.

The dry stone wall was layers of acrylic scraped through to reveal highlights with a palette knife.

The foreground was layers of oil pastel, blended over and texture scraped in.

Art Demonstration in Mixed Media - Selsey Arts Dream

O.K. so I'm hooked on the triptych format!

This was fun working in a loose way "drawing" in the highlights with oil pastel first with much layering and blending for the bright green field section to be scraped through later.

Then slosh really deep toned indigo watercolur over feeding in purple lake toward the bottom.

Some acrylic work over the main tree.

Busy Season for Art Society Demonstrations - Lancing Art Club - Coastal Cliff Scene in Acrylics

I chose the triptych format having tried one before at Adur Art Club. To be brutally honest, that was because I had run out of big enough sheets of watercolour paper! I like the audience to be able to see what I'm doing from the back of the room as I've been to many demo's where the person out the front is fiddling about with something but you havn't got a chance of seeing it yourself.

So the subject was "Barras Nose" just round the coast from Tintagel and I used my own photos for reference. A tonal block study with gradual illumination over and employing the palette knife both to lay paint on and scratch it back for texture.

Back to the same coast on holiday this year! Yay!

More Art Classes in Worthing

 Downland Art Society demonstration

                        GOING PRIVATE!                         Well - circumstances have once again resulted in major changes in life with me taking redundancy from the remainder of my college courses. It's about time really and I wont miss the paperwork in the least!
Art classes in Worthing at the Heene Gallery are now going really well with Monday and Thursday at capacity and the Tuesday life class really busy.
I'm loving teaching and being my own boss.

Shoreham-by-sea art classes at the Shoreham Centre still have spaces and I'm looking forward to working with new students at that venue.

Have just taken delivery of a new kiln - much bigger and more efficient. It will mean me being able to bisque fire 4 or 5 pieces the maximum size of my gas Raku kiln. Can't wait to try it.

Also got a new kitty - "Merlin"

And a new camera!

(better shot of Merlin next time)

NEW ART CLASSES IN WORTHING

Due to a change in circumstances I have now launched my own Art Classes in addition to my regular Life Classes at The Heene Gallery in Worthing.

I love the venue (o.k. it could do with it's own car park but you can't have everything!).
I start my first Monday class tomorrow from 2pm till 4pm with the classes being on a 5 week rolling basis.

It's open to all levels and students may work from their own reference or the provided class theme in their preferred media.

I am also planning day workshops - watch this space!

Interview with Worthing Art

I was really happy to give an interview to this group of talented people. Check out their pages at worthingart.wordpress.com

Life Classes at the Heene Gallery

The life classes are going really well with great feedback, in a scenario where I have not advertised as "word of mouth" seems to be doing all the work!
Some really great pieces of work being produced across a broad range of personal styles.
The second costume life night was inspired by the folk- lore world of Arthur Rackham's illustrations of fairies.
Our wonderful model for the evening was o.k. with the bracken, ivy and vines - and with wearing the large tissue fairy wings!
The reference photos I took turned out really grainy for several reasons - mainly that I forgot to alter the low res format from a previous shoot. Still, kind of adds to the mystery.

Marcus Finch - "Alchemy? (Or Raku?)

Marcus Finch becomes an "alchemist" when he produces "raku" ceramics, creating lustrous metallic surfaces from glazes of "purest green".

Whether in 3D form or 2D, the works have loose landscape paintings showing the interaction between trees and the moon, sometimes with a recurring theme of the crow.

Below is a detail of "Chanctonbury and the Elusive Crow", which fired higher than planned but produced a greater array of colours

LIFE CLASSES IN WORTHING

Sometimes in life you get a perfect opportunity. I've been teaching life classes at Northbrook College for a few years now and love every minute of it.

Then an ex-colleague (John Stanley- Clamp) 'phones me up and offers me taking over his Tuesday night class at the "Heene Gallery".

It didn't take long to decide -- "Yes please".

SO - I've just finished my first 5 week block with a number of his previous students and contacts from my own classes. It's been going really well and the period flint and brick hall is a joy to hold classes in.

So much so, I'm already nearly at capacity for my second 5 weeks.

I decided to make each 5th week a "special" with a costume life theme. Last week we had the wonderful "Frankie" http://frankiecluney.weebly.com as our model in a fantastically authentic Toulouse Lautrec period "Burlesque" costume with stage up-lighting (See photo) Thanks Frankie for all the effort you put in to the costume, hair and make-up.

"Frankie - Burlesque"

Currently Exhibiting

Really pleased to be one of "The Invited" artists exhibiting in the current show till February in the main upstairs gallery at Worthing Museum & Art Gallery.

It's a really professional looking show with a broad range of work. Particularly notable are my friend Teresa Martin's sculptures - she's done some amazing pieces this year and continues to be an inspiration to her students.

I have a case of Raku ceramics on show and am working on some prints and mounted originals for my new browser.

Chanctonbury - Stormy Night

Turquoise Trees

Dragon's Egg

Dragons Egg

It's well worth a look - I have to get some more work together to replace the sold items - pyromania follows shortly!

Printing Fun - Drypoint

I enjoy working with texturing tools with clay and have found pleasing similarities with basic printworking. DRYPOINT  also brings back fond memories of some of my first pieces of artwork created with "British Scraperboard".
With any new genre it goes a lot easier if you know some of the "tricks of the trade".
Using water based printing ink, I had initial problems with fast drying. even with damp paper . Inking up a perspex plate was very tricky and yielded only partial results - frustrating in a group situation!

The answer was just one drop of washing up liquid in the small amount of ink used - plus a rounded nuffing pad to take off excess ink in circular motions - so as not to lift out ink from incised lines,

Damp paper dabbed off to an even finish was ideal for lifting a print. I love the individual character of these prints - with each inking up there are more possibilities.

LINO

Having been inspired by printmaking from several sources -namely Maxine Prescott, and my dear friend Jonathan Howlett (not to mention the works of John Buckland-Wright),

this is my first attempt at a linocut (modern synthetic) printed by hand with water-based inks.. I'm pleased with the result and with the experience in which I have learned how to approach the next.

The theme is my beloved Chanctonbury Ring (again).

Nuclear Fusion - If Only

Ingredients from the art cupboard that have sat there since a good friend and mentor said "Beware the metallic" - now, just the right thing.

These show the "not being beaten" spirit again as they started as acrylic "monoprints" and ended up with "extreme" hand finishing.

For the Love of Space

I collect images in my mind. I LOVE satellite imagery of our planet's surface.

The Ural Mountains from several miles up. MAJESTIC!

(or is it the glaze in the bowl of a ceramic lanscape form?)

The Sound of a Coin Tumbling Towards the Void.

At some point in life you have to recognise what makes sense. For some time I've been aware of tributaries of water flowing through broken landscape, searching eachother out to join and make sense collectively. Recurring images, light, landscape, water - the elements of Earth.

Looking at the back catalogue of work as pebbles strewn on a beach - elements are starting to accrete like the influences of gravity over time.

Exploring Printmaking

Sometimes the simplest of concepts, (in this case monoprinting from a "painted" plate), can be affected by the smallest of technical hitches.

Ink consistency! --- now my tube inks are better mixed the higher viscosity is proving much more manageable and control of the creative process is now possible!
Over two evenings I have been absorbed with first of all "generic" Dartmoor landscapes, and subsequently working from site specific reference.

The resulting images are more "impressionist"? and atmospheric than my painted works, but are most definitely connected to the way I approach ceramics where I am searching for simplicity of imagery in a loose style. 

Mixed media landscapes - "Taw Valley"
Acrylics and oil pastels.

I spent my college years at Exeter and used to go out to Dartmoor and absorb the atmosphere. I developed oil pastels as a supporting drawing medium for my ceramic works, using my clay tools to work them.


Oil pastels are an underrated medium which I find best used with layering, blending and scraffito techniques.

"Below Cissbury" - mixed media.

Sometimes it's the quick and spontaneous that I value.

This piece was done as a demonstration in the use of oil pastel as a resist medium. Being brave with the washes of watercolour over switches the dramatic lighting effects on. This is the first of a series I've planned referencing favourite local landscape.

The vivid Russian watercolour used suits this style.

Art Blog - this is me!

I want this blog to be a snapshot into my art experiences. Last year (which has gone SOOO fast) I was doing a lot of soul searching about the diverse nature of my artistic endeavours. I'd begun to notice that artists who "make it" into mainstream galleries have a recogniseable identity which maybe leads them toward a specific path, and perhaps one that comes with certain constraints.

Thinking in a "corporate" sense, it would seem that the financially oriented gallery world tends to produce a "branded" artist. Collectors tend to identify with an artistic theme or individualism of style that an artist presents. It then becomes difficult for the artist to break away from that mould as they risk alienating their client base.

In an ideal world, we could all be producing artworks where the selling of them doesn't matter. But it does - some of us use art as their means of income - so various factors come to bear.

I ended up with deciding that I am who I am, and if that means I do a lot of different stuff then I'm going to celebrate that! It's an asset in teching as I can discuss a wider range of subjects, media and styles from an informed position.

So - the blog content is going to be about my experiences and how these relate to and influence my own artworks as they appear in various "streams" . Let's hope these streams flow into something you find inspirational in some way.