New Blog! Please transfer...

Hello all,
I can announce that I have a website in full swing now and I've decided it will be easier for us all if I just keep everything under one roof, so I have begun a new blog on the actual website, so... if you would, could you please transfer your interest to the following link, and I'll see you all very soon......

www.andybroderick.com

Summer Beckons...

It's time for another instalment from the creative comings-and-goings of Andy Broderick!  It has been a very good start to the year I'm happy to announce, including a multinational textile company have bought the rights to some of my images to print onto cushions and other various household items (apparently English country wildlife is very in fashion at the moment!)  So watch out in your local House of Fraser, you might just see some of my work, including this little baby, the original of which I subsequently sold to a visitor to my studio a couple of weeks ago.

I am also delighted to be the latest artist on the books at Gallerina in Darlington, who have sold two pieces of my work already this year, and are waiting for some more off me so they can give my a permanent wall, how exciting!  Richard and Helen who run the gallery cultivate a very relaxed, inviting and accessible atmosphere, and I highly recommend you drop in to see the other really excellent work that they have on show there, or even just for a natter and a cup of coffee, which they also love there.  You can have a little peek at their web-doings here: http://www.gallerina.co.uk/index.html

This coming week will see my work hung once again on the walls of the Congregational gallery in Rothbury, Northumberland.  One of my favourite places to show, not least because the building is very impressive and a beautiful place to show and view work, but also because Rothbury is such a lovely little town, especially this time of year, and the bread and cakes that are baked by Linda, the owner of the gallery are of the highest quality!  I played last year at Rothbury Roots supporting Dana and Susan Robinson which went well and the Congregational gallery are keen to get me to play a little set for them at an event in the gallery sometime in May, so keep an eye on their Facebook for further details about this. https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Congregational-Gallery/371648716184630
 I'll be taking the work down this Monday, and among the selected pieces is this one which I received fresh from the framers only yesterday. Hope it sells.

Still to come this year will be my exhibition at the Danby Moors Centre which I'm really looking forward to.  It's a fine gallery space in a beautiful setting and is really setting a name for itself having recently had shows by esteemed artists William Tillyer and Peter Hicks (which is still on if you fancy a look) so it's quite an honour for me to be showing there.  

The work for that one is coming along nicely, and to help me with it I invested in a new camera with a good zoom lens to help me get some nice shots of the local wildlife.  In the Easter holidays a couple of weeks ago I took it to Hawes in Wensleydale and got some really fantastic images which I can work from.  Mind, I had to go out at 6am to get them, but it was worth it!  

Some of these little critters might find their way onto the walls of the Moors Centre Gallery in August!

Meanwhile I'll leave you with a little sample of what I'm working on at the minute.  

Take care 

North and South

It's been a busy few weeks between playing gigs and exhibitions etc.Christmas is coming and I've been lucky enough to get some pieces into galleries, near and far, making the hope of a sale or two in the run up to Christmas more realistic!  Last week we opened the Christmas show at the gallery where my studio is based and it was a really lovely event, with plenty of people coming through the door to sample some mulled wine and mince pies, meet the artists who had all opened up their studios and they also got subjected to a regaling from my band members and I who make up Brigit's Mantle - our Irish traditional ballad group.

I also recently had the pleasure of playing music at the very friendly Crookes Folk club in Sheffield, which I would highly recommend a visit to, some lovely people and superb young musicians, and I also played support to Dana and Susan Robinson at the prestigious Rothbury Roots series of concerts in Northumberland.  While I was in town I dropped into the Congregational Gallery for a coffee and a delicious home made scone, and after a lovely chat and a catch up with co-ordinators Linda and Ali, walked out with a date for an exhibition in May, with a music night penned in also!  The Congregational is one of my favourite galleries, a truly beautiful space with an inviting and cosy atmosphere.

I covered an awful lot of miles last month in the name of art, with two trips down south.  The first was to hang a set of paintings in a small gallery space in the back of a shop called Raft Clothing in Newent, Gloucestershire.  This is a nice, upmarket venue with lots of interesting and desirable objects you can peruse, including my drawings and prints!  They've been selling my prints like hot cakes down there, so we thought it was time to go and hang some of my originals in their gallery space to see how they get on.

The other work you can see is by the esteemed painter Joe Cole.  Click here to see Raft's website
http://www.raftclothing.co.uk/types/art-gallery/

 My second trip down south was a very entertaining visit to Eton College of all places, to attend the opening of my friend and colleague Peter Hicks.  Peter's a superb painter and has been very supportive since I've known him, and it was a pleasure to see his excellent work on show in such an auspicious venue.

I also managed to get some work into the Palace Hub in Redcar again in time for the run up to Christmas.  I was delighted to make a sale from this venue the last time I exhibited there and Nel and Mark have been very supportive, not just of my work, but of the many dozens of other great artists in this area, and it's a pleasure for me to work with them.

Lastly worth a mention, tonight is the night I join my small group of students who meet every Thursday night at the gallery I mentioned earlier, where my studio is based, for a Christmas celebration drink!  We've booked a room at the local Italian restaurant where we will eat pizza, drink wine, and maybe even sing a few songs!  They are a lovely group, and I'm looking forward to getting going again in the new year with a sculpture project I'm writing for them currently.  I am beginning a new group of beginners on a separate night, as I've had loads of interest from people wanting to study with me, so if you would like to get involved with this group, based in Saltburn, please get in touch :)

Meanwhile I am working away on this little fella.....

Ok, that's it for my Christmas blog instalment...
HAVE A GOOD ONE!

The Stillness of Growth

Well, it seems I've been something of a Luddite over the past.... oh dear - 3 years since I began this blog and only made one post!  This is the beginning of me being much more conscientious about my blogging, I promise!  You may be wondering what became of all these hares and crows, if you've been reading the previous post, so I'll fill you in by all means....

Eventually I felt the need to explore other areas and subjects and elements within the theme of wildlife, and expanded out into drawing some other creatures....

I continued with these, and with the simple nettle studies that I mentioned in the last post, and all of this culminated in an exhibition at Saltburn Gallery, which I titled "The Stillness of Growth".  I was very pleased with this show, and it was well received by all who came along.  I decided to show the nettle studies in a very simple way in terms of their presentation, simply attaching them to a smaller piece of foam board on the back and sticking them to the wall, so that only the drawing on paper was present, slightly raised from the wall, and placed in rows along two of the gallery walls.

This poem by Teesside poet Bob Beagrie served to compliment the work on show:

And this one sold on the opening night! 

These lovely photos of the night were all taken by Sheffield based photographer John O' Malley.

http://www.jomalley.co.uk

After this show I began working with Natural Partners card and fine art print company, who now supply my images to stockists all over the country, and I went on to have exhibitions in the Joe Cornish Gallery in Northallerton, the Congregational Gallery in Rothbury, Northumberland, The Turnstone Gallery in Sandsend, and Zillah Bell in Thirsk, as well as a few pieces in Coast Gallery, Scarborough, Chris Geall Gallery in Grosmont and the Palace Hub gallery in Redcar.  Phew!

My next big show will be at the Danby moors centre in August 2014, where I'll be showing with two fantastic wildlife sculptors, Emma Stothard and Stef Ottevanger.  More details of that to follow nearer the time, in the meantime, I'm busy cracking on making work for it! 

Hares, Crows and Nettles.

This past year has seen me focus obsessively on drawing three main subjects; hares, crows, and nettles, with an enormous bias on the latter.  The reason for these particular subjects is not entirely clear to me, except that I have found drawing them extremely seductive, in contrast to other subjects I've explored in the past.  There is some history; crows have had a sort of allure for me for many years now - not the kind of geeky Gothic fascination associated with films such as the one with Bruce Lee's son in, but something much more fundamental and earthy.  I experience a sort of sad, romantic beauty when I look at crows, especially in a field of grass, or on  a stone wall.  They remind me of my grandfather in his black jacket and trousers.

Traditionally, they do evoke also a sort of folky mysticism, the sort normally associated with ravens like in the song "Crazy Man Michael" by Fairport Convention, which I know people bring to the drawings of the hares that I've been doing, but I always try to play this down.  It always seems to me that the presence of the hare was much more prevalent in English folklore than in Irish, where the role of the animal character was occupied by hounds and bulls and, strangely enough, crows. 

And as for the nettles, it's the humility of the subject matter that really appeals to me.  And I try to reflect this in the way that they are portrayed.  The drawings are small, and invariably modest, lacking in any "wow factor" or sense of visual exclamation that might be reminiscent of the kind of advertising media methods that we're used to seeing today.  They don't try to reach out and grab our attention, as admittedly much of my earlier work had a tendency to do.  They just sit there and sort of "be".  But then again they don't - they're always changing, with every minute that they're exposed to the light.  I make them by pulping actual nettles and using the pulp - just as it is - to draw out the shapes of the same nettles drawn earlier in the day.  They don't look like much at first to be honest.  Just pools of green water with jagged edges.  It's when they dry, that's when the real process happens, almost like a sort of magic.  They take on a real sense of being alive, as though the life energy of the plant has transferred itself through the process.  And this happens when I have stopped drawing, without the presence of my hand.  I love the poverty of this material, making a drawing so humble and perennial, but at once precious because of its beauty and short life span.   

This set of themes and imagery are what make up my current studio practice.  It's an ongoing exploration, and  hopefully in 2011 the body of work will be complete, and I will be aiming to exhibit it in a place where it can stretch out some roots and flourish.

Andy