Breaking away from the herd

Breaking away from the herd
Mixed Media
11x14"

$300

If you would like to buy this painting, it will be available from the Foyer Gallery from April 11th 2008. Please email me at art@shelleyhocknell.com for more details.

The mixed media I am using is watercolour, pastel, and inks. They are great fun to create, and you can generate a lot of movement really spontaneously. I used a coloured paper for this one, and the pigments react differently to it, creating an unpredictable environment, to an extent, which opens up lots of possibilities for 'happy mistakes'.

Kokanee Photo

I thought it might be interesting to show one of my photographs of the Kokanee which I've been working from - especially for people who haven't seen them before.

Art Review on EmptyEasel.com!

Thankyou EmptyEasel for a really cool review! Check it out at emptyeasel.com

Kokanee studies

Visit my online store at eCrater.com!

This is a detail from a series of mixed media paintings I'm working on for my forthcoming exhibition at The Foyer Gallery at Lake Tahoe Community College. The theme of my show is inspired by the spawning Kokanee Salmon, found here in Lake Tahoe.

Mixed media works are great fun, as they allow me to experiment with marks and colours in a more immediate way than oil painting. I use watercolour, pastel, inks and charcoal on heavy watercolour paper - which I stretch in advance to avoid buckling and to create a uniform, stable surface to work on.

Many of these Kokanee paintings have a metaphorical significance for me, and I find the repetitive nature of the designs liberating. There's so much energy and movement in the images, which makes for a dynamic which is visually exciting, as well as thought provokingly open to interpretation. On a pragmatic level, the images are dealing with the life cycle of fish. The kokanee return to the same place they were born (Taylor Creek), to lay eggs and then die. During the spawning they change from silver with a blue stripe to bright pinky-red with blue heads. The spectacle of hundreds of brightly coloured fish 'treading water' in a shoal just beneath the surface of the clear Tahoe water is breathtaking.

The poetic nature of this visually striking display is hard to dismiss. The joyous writhing is soon replaced by death. The luminous colour turns to grey, upturned fish litter the stream - a hearty meal for the bears, beavers, coyotes and birds who inhabit this picturesque landscape. The fertilised eggs are buried in the streambed, and hatch 100 days later, to start the whole cycle again.

More Bedtime Stories!

More Bedtime Stories
Oil on Canvas Panel
10x8"

$79.99
Click here to purchase

I got a nice big delivery of art supplies yesterday from Dick Blick, so I was really excited to try out my new canvas panels for these studies. I also ordered to big roll of canvas and some 60" stretcher bars, so that should keep me busy for a while!

This is a painting I've had in mind for a long time, and has a lot of meaning besides the subject for me. Most things I paint end up having some kind of personal metaphor embedded in them, whether or not I realise it at the time I paint it.

Sometimes I have to sit back after I've finished a big painting, exhausted, and just stare for hours at it. I'm becoming familiar with it, which I know sounds weird because I might have just spent a few weeks being obsessed with it while I'm structuring ideas, making drawings, stretching canvas or preparing a panel, and then actually painting it.

Sometimes it feels like someone else painted it, and I just came along at the end and decided on a title. I think that's when I know I've really allowed something subconscious to drive a piece, and so the emotion can be somewhat raw and challenging. I used to be fairly spiritual, and imagined that someone was channelling though me in some way. I don't feel that way any more. I know it all comes from me, from my experience, from my body, and my mind. It's not always an easy thing to accept.

Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories
Oil on Panel
5x7"

Click here to buy this painting for
$49.99

Ellie was actually 'reading' to me at the time this was taken. She was illuminated in a really pretty pink light from her string of flower lights hanging over her bed. I'm planning a larger version of this, taken from further away. She looked so tiny in her bed, surrounded by lights. It was a perfect composition - atmospheric, emotive and nostalgic.

Award-Winning Documentary 'High Art' included on showreel!

David Jinks of FridgeProductions, a UK film company, made the award-winning documentary 'High Art' about my work in 2005. My little appearance on this showreel is taken from that movie, filmed in Fontainebleau and Wales. He is currently making a feature film called 'The Impossible Escape' about a group of prisoners who escape and brave the wilds of Siberia.