I know, I know, I have been a terribly disloyal and an uncommitted blogger. A lot has happened since my last entry and to summarise; I got engaged and had a career change.

Quite by accident I began working at a primary school, initially as a visiting artist and then as an education practitioner. I have worked  with people with special needs sporadically for about 15 years and have always loved it, but being a teacher was never a consideration  That is, until I found myself teaching art…and I fell in love with it!

And henceforth I have been on, what feels like, the never-ending path of teacher training. Here I am, still an artist and now also a teacher, hurrah!

I haven’t had much time for my own artwork. I can however share with you this little treat that I did over Christmas as a gift.

]]> http://www.siobhanbromley.co.uk/all-change/feed/ 1 http://www.siobhanbromley.co.uk/fathoms-below/ http://www.siobhanbromley.co.uk/fathoms-below/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:34:10 +0000 Siobhán Bromley http://www.siobhanbromley.co.uk/?p=477 More preparation. Not going to say too much, but this is just here to whet your appetite!

A brief feather drawing to be used at a later date. I particularly liked this feather because of the way its tranquil shape has been disrupted on one side. It illustrates the relationship between calm and aggression, action and passivity.

I am quite sure that I shall be working and reworking this painting for a long time to come and I am looking forward to the challenge.

I am back from my week’s break in the beautiful Midi-Pyrenees region of France. I could have spent some serious time there if only I had taken my paints. Mind you, I would have had to come home eventually. So, what did I achieve artistically whilst there (bearing in mind this was meant to be a holiday)? Well, I did a fair amount of preparatory sketches for a pair of paintings I have been desperate to do for years (watch this space). I also did this drawing which I hope will eventually form the basis of a series of Lion and Tree images.

My head seems so full of ideas and pictures forming in the swirling mists of my brain. There just isn’t enough time in the day to get them all on paper even when I can make sense of them. Frustrating indeed but a thousand times better than the creative blindness I have suffered in the past. There’s no doubt, however, that I am having fun with my art and really feel as though it’s starting to grow into something.

I’m afraid I can’t give you too much reasoning behind this one. A little bit of fantasy art mixed with an overflow of swirls in my head and a need to spill them onto paper. I rather like this one though.

Essentially, you can see you want to here, so don’t pay too much heed to my own reasoning behind the scribbles. Take from it what you will.

Other times, my doodles are directly inspired by elements I have encountered. This particular piece, ‘The Great Exhibition’ was from thinking about the notion of colonial conquests, the cabinet de curiosités and ultimately the phenomenon of the western desire to collect other cultures and to museumise ourselves.

I don’t quite know what’s come over me of late but I just can’t stop thinking about trees. Everywhere I look I see the twists and swirls and angles of branches, barks and roots. Like dancing patterns. I think the reason I love to dr

aw and paint them so much is that because they are organic their shapes differ so much in reality. Therefore, I can let my imagination run riot and move almost entirely away from drawing a tree but the simplest of linear suggestion can bring it back to show that the odd collection of lines form a living tree. Here are just 2 small tree doodles I did  lately, there are plenty more however that I have been finishing off. I shall put those up shortly.