Teresa Cutmore

2022 

During the Covid lock down time I finally made strides with our garden and was taking endless photos of the beautiful flowers I had planted - oh my, when the sun shone through those petals and leaves one photo was never enough!!

Then towards the end of 2021 - when my 'Studio' became hubby's office - I started to concentrate on art that used less space - i.e. pencil and paper - and drawing my flowers seemed the obvious subject to choose.

Faber Castell's range of polychromos colouring pencils is vast but I started out with just a handful - adding a few more here and there.  I adore the depth of colour these provide.

I'm always up for challenging myself and capturing my flowers was a new one for me - I hope you enjoy having a look through my sketchbook of results.

2019

When my friend, Ian Pile, posted his fabulous photo of the sun shining through Old Leigh during the folk festival, I immediately felt I wanted to paint the scene.  Ian graciously allowed me to use his photo and I challenged myself to complete this in one month - hence #paintseptember'19 became my daily post on social media, showing the process from sketching out to completion.

I chose 12 of those to provide a rough view here of my progression.

Ian noticed I had left some things out but didn't spot immediately that I had added him in :)

2018

Drawing and painting have always been creative interests for me – along with sewing, knitting, papercrafts, photography and, more recently, pottery and lino printing – I’ve always had something crafty on the go and always had a sketchbook in my bag.

When I saw an article in Artist&Illustrator Aug’14 it drew my attention to Twitter’s Art Community, where a daily practice is encouraged.  Since then I’ve made a more concentrated effort to study and practise more consistently.

Each month has a different theme and using the relevant hashtag #DrawAugust  #PaintSeptember #PrintOctober etc you post your art work and view / comment on others.  Such a delightful daily gallery with wonderful fellow art tweeters providing very helpful encouragement.  Sticking to the hashtag helped to limit Twitter content by only viewing one particular theme.

I challenged myself to post every day for that first month (see @teresacutmore/media) and I have tried to engage daily ever since but continually fail to post on Twitter as the rest of life takes over at times!  That first injection though really did boost my enthusiasm to just do what I do.

With that enthusiasm I joined SAC in Spring 2016 and responding to an email for help I found myself on the committee as Winter Programme Organiser.

Being involved with the club is so rewarding and I’m loving rubbing shoulders with professional and amateur artists of all different styles.

November that year I turned 60 and decided I would celebrate the culmination of those 6 decades by having my own exhibition - just for family & friends called 60@sixty.  I pulled together 60(++) pieces of all my various art mediums, including digital drawings - as well as photography, sewing, paper projects, pottery and my Thunderbirds chess set!

I thoroughly enjoyed curating my own exhibition.  One of the earliest pieces I still had was my Al Green using poster paints on sugar paper from 1979!  You can view a snapshot of my exhibition here: 60@sixty Display