Delaunay-Holdsworth

The guest instructor for week three of the Wanderlust “inspired by another artist” theme was Tanyalee Kahler (website, Instagram).

A severe lack of energy means that I have done very little creative work over the last couple of months; if it didn’t have to be done (like the two birthday cards), then it didn’t get done. This means that I am now so far behind on the Wanderlust 2019 classes that they will keep me going through 2020 at this rate.

And I wasn’t exactly caught up with the classes when I ground to a halt. That did at least mean I could pick and choose which lessons I felt like doing — got to find the positive side of things — and this is the last of the projects that I made over the summer. On the plus side, I did go into my hiatus having created a piece that I am really happy with.

The aim of this class was to combine influences from two different artists. I originally thought that it was going to be hard to pick them — there are a lot of artists that I like, but none that immediately sprang to mind — so I just had a look at the art, books, bookmarks and postcards around me and slowly an idea formed.

I decided to mash-up the colour blocks of Robert Delaunay (from a Tate bookmark) with the silhouette figures of local Wimbledon artist Jo Holdsworth. Some of Jo’s paintings — the Passengers Reflecting series for example — are of people in train stations, so that influenced my choice of focal image (a shot of Notting Hill Gate tube station picked from my photo archive).

I glazed everything with quinacridone nickel azo gold — love that colour — to help tie the elements together, added silhouetted figures throughout the page and used the gilding to extend the lines from the image out into the background.

Definitely one of my favourite creations from the Wanderlust classes so far.

Class:

• Wanderlust 2019