Kerry Darlington

Exhibition and Studio Open Day Sat Dec 10th - All welcome!

2011-12-06T06:07:00.000-08:00

October 2011

2011-11-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Hellooooo. So I have been busy with a couple of exhibitions in London, thanks to everyone that came it was a really good turnout and the work nearly sold out. I am preparing now for my open studio event in December. Another new piece I have been working on is a recurring theme in my work, Shakespeare's 'Ophelia' (first stage photo attached) and I am also planning a piece based on Christine from Phantom of the Opera who is another female figure that I love.
Besos!
kerry

New Pieces

2011-08-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy Summer, exhibitions in Swansea and Narbeth, thankyou to everybody that came. New pieces are on their way to galleries now, 2 new faerie prints entitled 'The Midnight Garden" and "Faerie Hollow".

The Lady of Shalott

2011-08-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

Lady of Shalott - "I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

I finally finished the painting 'Lady of Shalott', pictures above. It is a life size painting so rather hard to photograph it - professional pics to arrive shortly.

2011-05-06T09:43:00.001-07:00

The Great British Summer

New painting half way through

2011-04-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

The latest addition to my studio :-)

2011-04-11T09:30:00.001-07:00

Give a warm welcome to my little Pug, the studio dog - Che Guevara! He is inspiring a painting along the lines of the bird vases, which I call the pug-jug :-) I am unsure whether there will be any takers for that one!

Work in progress

2011-03-18T15:33:00.000-07:00

A quick update with snapshots showing the figurative pieces I am working on - the large piece measures 2.5 m high and is at present called E=mc2.
The smaller piece is currently nameless, I will post more as I go :-)

Sakura

2011-02-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Here are some snaps of an original piece entitled 'Sakura', which is the Japanese word for 'Cherry Blossom'. I will shortly be taking some more professional shots for the website. She measures 180cm x 120cm and is a mixture of layered, bright colours and metallics upon white. She was framed in a gorgeous swept frame which has some gold brushed through and looks amazing. She will be displayed in the N.E.C. Art show this week and sold to a gallery. If you are interested the please contact someone from Bucks Fine Art or your local gallery.

Enchanted Faerie Prints

2011-02-04T13:28:00.001-08:00

This month will see the release of 2 hand-sculptured limited edition prints featuring faerie creatures. I created them as a pair, and each print has a variety of original pieces attached to it.
I basically began with creating a coloured background, adding various textures to create shapes; then looked for creatures in the shapes. It was a very organic process, I used what was given to me in the first process, and found lots of strange looking animals:-) It was great fun, I was able to draw on my experience in painting faeries in my school days. I painted the faeries separately in pen and inks as they were to be the 3d pieces. So here they are, they have their debut this weekend at the Birmingham Spring Show at the N.E.C. where the originals will (hopefully) be sold to galleries, and orders will be taken for the prints. If you really would like one I suggest you order in the next couple of weeks through your gallery (you can speak to someone from Buckingham Fine Arts who sell my work on www.bucksfineart.co.uk), they will help you locate a piece.
The green piece is entitled 'Enchanted Forest' and the pink/red one 'Faerie Forest'. They have lots of hidden details as you know I enjoy those!
Bye for now!

Caring for your Painting

2010-12-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

Caring for your painting is easy. The resin will attract dust over time, which can be dusted off using a soft new paintbrush or a micro-fibre cloth. (I always encourage people to touch the work, for which you can buff off fingerprints with the micro-fibre cloth).

'My paintings are heavily textured, layered and the resin is applied by hand. The resin I use is actually a thick varnish and is not supposed to represent glass. With the 3d work in particular, it is quite impossible to have a completely pure 'glass' finish, the works will often contain bubbles and dimples or raised spots within the resin. These are caused from the texture raising up through the resin, they are not imperfections and should be expected. Furthermore, the reason I use texture is to make the paintings more tactile, so I use thin layers of resin to show that.
For my paintings which do not have the 3d pieces embedded, they will have less bubbles etc but it cannot be comparable to glass as again, it is not applied by machine but by hand.'

Prints! And, Cant believe it's the end of September

2010-09-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

and I havent been on my blog since May - oops!
So thankyou for all the comments, Ive only just read them, hope all the births have gone well :-) and best wishes to you all.........
I have been extremely busy as I have recently signed with Buckingham Fine Art Publishers and they are starting to publish my limited edition prints, starting with 2 'Naive' paintings. The idea behind them is that they look as 'original' as possible so I have worked on top of each individual print. Although there are 100 of each, they all have something unique and will retail at substantially less than an original piece.
The prints I am working on at the moment are influenced by the Illustrations I was brought up with, rather magical trees with elfin creatures which should be available in galleries before Christmas. I will post pictures of them as soon as they are available.

I am posting the pictures of my new work this week below,
Nos da!

2010-05-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to find out that I have been nominated as a finalist for the 'Bestselling Published Artist Award 2010' which is run by the Fine Art Trade Guild and voted by all UK Gallery/Retailers sales over the last 18 months. This is the first time I have been eligible to enter the award so I am very happy it resulted in a nomination,a big thankyou to all the galleries that voted for me. The winner will be presented with the award on May 15th.
I promised to update you on my other ventures, one being the BP Portrait exhibition, unfortunately I didnt make it this time but I will keep trying in the future, I wont give up :-)
I have also entered for the Welsh Fine Art exhibition, Eisteddfod, in Cardiff, (with Gwannag Annwm and Brigid's Fire) and the Royal Academy Summer Show (Wild is the Wind/Undine) so will let you know what happens there.
I am currently preparing for an interview and cover page for the magazine 'Picture Business' as well as preparing new work that will be published in the next few months.

2010-03-08T05:11:00.000-08:00

Here are some random pictures of my studio and me with Cris, taken by a lovely guy and photographer that paid us a visit.
(Photographs copyright Richard Davis 2010)

Portrait - study of head

2010-03-08T04:55:00.000-08:00

So, in my spare time (:-) I have been working on a rather large portrait of my son Luca. I am entering it into a portrait competition for the first time so I will let you know how I get on with that. It measures 1m x 1m, and is a study really as I have never attempted a large scale head before. I wanted to see how my technique would cope with it. I work in a circular motion, Cris calls it 'pixelating', but anyway its just how I feel most natural painting. I shall show a close up so you can see the strokes I use. This painting has about 6 layers, so you can see through the top layer in some parts right through to the first layer. I always start with the negative of an image, so everything that will be light starts off black and vice versa. I think it turned out fairly well, but have decided that my technique works better no bigger than life size.
Next blog is about a painting I am working on at the moment which is proving to be my absolute favourite of all my work, in a couple of weeks it should be ready to photograph. So, till then!

New Year New Beginnings

2010-01-24T03:09:00.000-08:00

Firstly Happy New Year to you all, I am going to make a real effort this year to update my blog every month :-)
So, all of December was spent in Chile with my family. We stayed near Santiago and also travelled across to 'Rapa Nui' - Easter Island. It was a 5 hour flight across the ocean, unbelievable.
It was the most magical place I ever visited (apart from San Atacama). If you do believe in what they call 'residential energies' within rocks etc, this is the place where you can really feel it. It was an unexplainable sensation, wandering through the moai on the volcanoes, nobody else around, just silence along with wind and rain. Amazing place sincerely. The above photograph was taken on Anakena Beach there, by my husband. Its a fantastic photograph, I think it looks like a Vettriano scene!

I collected many photographs as I intend to do a portrait study of a young girl I met there. She was a member of the classical Rapa Nui Ballet and posed for us in order for me to do a painting. I am also working on a piece of my Chilean niece so I have come away with lots of ideas.
This year I am also intending to follow the theme of the Tree of Life which has always featured strongly in my work. I love the endless possibilities of the tree, and have done since first reading 'The Magic Faraway Tree' by Enid Blyton many years ago. I have some exciting new ideas along this theme alongside a new concept of prints which I believe has never been done before.

October 2009

2009-10-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

So I have finally got around to setting up a blog, to let people learn a bit more about my work and anything else going on that might be interesting!
Welcome along :-)