Glenys Cour – Artist

Painting, Web Design

My parents were friends of Glenys and I have known her since my youth. I now have the great pleasure in helping her to realise her wish to show her work through the medium of the web. I spent two days with her in Swansea this week talking about her life and work and formulating a design for her site. Glenys is a true colourist and her work really glows on the screen.

Here is one of her recent floral pieces inspired by a quotation by  a close friend, the Welsh poet Vernon Watkins in his poem “Taliesin and the Mockers”.

Floral Metaphor 1

And here is a spread from the handmade book “Taliesin and the Mockers”  from The Old Stile Press  illustrated by Glenys.

Street Photography

Photography

Wandering around London with a friend, not looking for anything in particular, lessons learned in checking camera settings before you start and remembering to switch between AV and TV to get the best of static and moving subjects.

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People

People, Photography

I do like faces – I think most people do, “people watching” is instinctive. I have made attempts at recording interesting faces photographically and in paint. I recently participated in a portraiture and street photography day in London and found the courage to ask people if I might take their photograph, sometimes I didn’t ask! I was so pleased to find most people to be kind and generous – and falttered!

Smoke

Painting, Photography

Portobello Beach near Edinburgh, 1st October – dusk on an unexpectedly warm evening.

The Edinburgh One O’Clock Gun – clicked the shutter a few seconds later than I’d hoped.

In my time as a conservator of paintings I learned that a semi opaque substance seen in front of a dark object or space, will appear as blue-hued even though it may be warm yellow or brown-hued itself. These two photos show that effect known rather pompously as the “Turbid Medium” effect, it also happens with other transluscent substances such as steam, mist and clouds.

This effect can be used to good purpose in oil painting especially in portraiture (a description of Rembrandt’s technique – a layer of light toned paint is laid thinly over a warm dark-toned area producing a cool effect in the upper layer suggestive of cool shadow on skin tones).

Slatted Shadows and Reflections

Jewellery, Photography

The image of the sunlight making slatted shadows on the wall reminded me of what I love about the kind of jewellery I make – repetition of parallel cuts.

All these fabulous photographs were taken by Matthew Booth who skilfully created exactly the kind of photos I had envisaged and intuitively understood how to transform mere objects into visions extending into the reflective surfaces.

All these pieces are made in Sterling silver and are available for sale from the Online shop