Heather Ritchie

Still making Christmas cards. Time is fairly whizzing along now. We are in the middle of November already. I am sure November only started last week...I could be wrong but that is what it feels like. We have had lots of rain and gales lately and I am having to clear out the wet birdfood and dry the table every couple of days. After all what self respecting bird would want porridge?

I enjoyed drawing the deer in last week's post so I thought I would do a few more. To simplify things I have used the same image as one of the deer last week. I tried lots of variations of different colours and shades but I thought this one worked the best.

I also thought I would do a white background to see which I preferred. I like them both.

Matilda and Ruby

My featured artist this week is a very lovely lady and friend called Heather Ritchie. We first met years ago when staying at her B&B in Reeth, North Yorks. We had stayed the year before and Heather was away but her husband knew we were interested in arts and crafts and let us have a peek into her fascinating studio. We were inspired by all the wonderfully coloured rugs she had created just from strips of wool fabric. You can view more of her rugs here.

Heather is a very well known and respected rug maker and teacher and travels all over the world holding workshops and displaying and selling her rugs. She even made a lovely rug inspired by one of my paintings. The photos below cannot show the tiny details within the very large rugs and the wonderful shades of wool she uses which she dyes herself. She uses her local landscapes of Yorkshire and her daily life and memories to create the rugs. My brother's partner Lesley is in the process of writing a book about Heather's life in rugs which is to be published next year. Can't wait for that.

She has also started a not-for-profit organisation called Rug Aid which is dedicated to teaching blind people in The Gambia to create their own rag rugs and sell them to provide living funds. On the 21 November the organisation is holding a Rug Rave in which groups or single people can participate to either make their own rugs or raise money in other ways for the organisation. You can read about that on the website too.

Heather's Studio in Reeth

Guiding Light rug

Bearing Gifts rug showing Heather carrying her sheep

The Ha'penny Ferry Rug

Rug of Fleet, Heather's Dog

Christmas Eve Rug

These two lovely delicate etchings below are by printmaker Flora McLachlan. The images are very magical and fairytale-like and totally mysterious. I love her work. You can see more of it a quite a few places on the Internet including Art of Illustration, (you will have to go to the bottom of the page and enter Flora's name - sorry, I cannot link to the right page for some reason, but there are three pages to look at, here at Sanders of Oxford, and here at Artweeks Gallery.

The Flowering

The Wood Pool

So much lovely autumn scenery around at the moment. Our weather has been very changeable lately. We have had lots of mists, a few frosts and now we are being battered by gale force winds and rain which is all coming from the south. I expect there will be far fewer leaves on the trees after this weekend.

If you like your ceramics quirky with wildlife on them you cannot get better than Anna Lambert. Anna is an English ceramacist living in Yorkshire who has work in many galleries and craft shops. She has a huge display of her work here at the Junction Workshop. The cockerel below is actually a tureen and has feathers for a ladle. Intriguing.

Bowl With Field Birds

Oat Jar With Herring Gull

Cockerel Tureen

Have you ever noticed what long eyelashes cows and horses have. Seems a little unfair really when they are not the least bothered about what they look like. You will need to click on the pictures to see them in more detail.

Anne Anderson is a Northern Irish artist and illustrator who now works mostly in printmaking. You can find more examples of Anne's beautiful work here at Artzyard Gallery, here at Seacourt Print workshop and here you will find a site called No Alibis which is producing a limited edition book called "The Book of Lost Things" which she is illustrating.The three lovely images below are her work.

Love Birds Collograph

Prevailing Wind

Scrabo Through The Window

I am always on the lookout for interesting and attractive cards. Christmas cards always appeal to me if they feature partridges in pear trees. These were buy one, get one free, so I got a couple of each design.

I came across a poetry book in a charity shop the other day and it is one I have wanted for a while. It is A Shropshire Lad by AE Housman. This particular copy is very special because it is illustrated by one of my favourite wood engravers - Agnes Miller Parker. Parker was Scottish and quite famous for her book illustrations. Her work is so beautifully elegant and rhythmic with well defined textures.

This is a well-known but very beautiful poem of Housman's. If you click on the image you can see it large enough to read. Housman was an English classical scholar who died in 1936.