Photographs as Paintings : 'Still Life.'

New landscapes : Journeys Project

Photographs as Paintings : New Landscapes from my 'Journeys' Project.

Photographs that become paintings.......

I am working on a series of landscapes at the moment experimenting with photographs and painting.

New printed circle paintings.....

I've been working on a whole series of abstract pieces lately for an interior design company mainly using digital media- long hours on photoshop and it reignited my inbuilt passion for shape and pattern so I've been doing some immediate hands on printed paintings for my Etsy shop and to escape the virtual world!

'Aqua Circles' and 'Crimson and tangerine circles' shown here are the two I've just listed. See

www.sarahjarrett.etsy.com.

I love working in this way and playing about with the endless combinations and arrangements of simple shapes and patterns.

I wanted them to look very bold and primative with strong colours and to echo Indian or African textiles.

Flowers - Painted Photographic Prints

I began my freelance career making large photographic colour prints of flowers and painting on to them with oils, sometimes I stitched onto the surface with a sewing machine. I hadn't seen any other photographic work that had stitched surfaces and I thought it was an interesting idea. It added another dynamic and gave the pieces a different quality. I gained a lot of early success with card and poster publishers with these images and I think it was because the idea was unusual and original.

I still make photographic pieces and continue to add other elements using collage and painting to experiment and explore. I am always drawn to flowers and still life objects. I like very simple arrangements. My main focus is always the differing qualities of natural light and of colour.

In my Etsy shop I sell prints and posters but I also have some original pieces for sale. This is the only venue for buying my originals as I rarely sell them on.
One day I would like to do a book of my flower images integrated with some of my landscapes of Norfolk. I am always recording . I have a plan chest crammed with prints and experiments that I would like to do something with............

Faces....

I run several Art sessions each week after school for children aged 5 -11 years. They are really popular and I've been running them for about 8 years now. I have always taught art alongside being an artist. Living in the countryside I wanted initially to offer creative opportunities for young children in rural areas. I moved from Brighton to Norwich in 1997 and I was quite shocked at how few 'art' opportunities there were here. I run my Art sessions to try and give children a chance to use lots of different materials and media but to also develop real confidence as they progress. In some schools Art seems to have a smaller and smaller place in the curriculum. They develop some amazing work and we have a proper exhibition of the art work each school term. I always make an artwork myself to start each project alongside visual ideas boards. I don't think its fair to ask them to do something I haven't attempted myself first.
I started a new project with my Art groups last week looking at faces and expressions. I wanted the idea to be really colourful and appealling so I made this piece as inspiration using a large sheet of cardboard as backing and making the headshapes and hair from newspaper and masking tape. I then painted all the detail. I used lots of bright patterns in stripes and spots and added hair accessories from cardboard. The children loved the idea and are developing some brilliant responses. One of the older girls who responds to anything decorative is making some wonderful hairstyles from curls and spirals of newspaper and some of the boys are making mohicans and punks for some of their characters. I hope to include some examples when they begin to paint their work.