A matter of balance.

And breathe ...

Here is an image which could feed your soul.

Hattie Lockhart-Smith is a printmaker who shows her work with Sussex Printmakers.

This beautiful image is one of three she has created on the same theme, a tower of balanced pebbles from the seashore. It measures roughly 40cm high. As always, getting the colour reproduction correct online is difficult. Imagine cool colours with the stones standing clear of the surface.

Let's say before anything else that these stones are carefully observed and drawn. The colouring feels authentic. We imagine that we are being presented with an unadorned subject, free of any embellishment except for some shadowing to give them form. Removing any kind of context or background from a subject has the effect of focusing our attention. Rather like the best meditation practice, we are freed from any distractions, freed to rest with the image.

So stay with this image, give it time.

In other posts here, we have thought about art bringing us into the presence of something. Hattie's print does this in a particular way. She has isolated the pile of stones so that it seems to be floating. But has also given it a weight which puts us in mind of the balancing trick such a tower would require. For many people, the kind of presence they would feel drawn into by this would be one of balance. That's quite an achievement for pigment on paper.

Get to see Hattie's work if you can. Allow it some time.

And breathe.

Extending the wonder.

Sue Hawksworth is a printmaker.

Printing is a technique which creates an image on one surface and applies it to another. A finished picture will often be created from several, overlaid images. One of the benefits of printing is that the completed picture can be reproduced several times. This is not always the case though. Sue's picture below is a monoprint, where only one reproduction has been made.

This is a beautiful image.

It is small - just 30cm by 15cm - and sits like a jewel on the gallery wall. It deserves to be seen at a distance at first: the colours shimmer and seem to float amongst each other. Long before you get close enough to think about subjects and titles, you realise that this is a spiritual image; that it speaks about layers of experience. You feel that this is a work which is capable of engaging with you.

When I was at school, we were told to view pictures like this through half-closed eyes. The idea was that forms would become more obvious, and highlights would be more striking. You can try this if you like - but really there's no need - and you will miss some important features if you do.

We have a title which tells us what the subject is. We can make out white cliff faces, green cliff edges and the blues of the sea, the blues of the sky. But for me, there is something special about being able to see the paint.

We've looked in other posts about the magic/illusion of painting; about how pigment skilfully applied to a surface can put us in mind of something else. But there is a way of extending the wonder some of us feel about that magic. You make the paint, the medium, obvious.

This really is paint; this really does put me in mind of something in the world.

For me, there is something wonderful about the way the white of the 'cliffs' bleeds into the sea; the way that roller strokes overshoot the cliff edge. I expect that Sue could have corrected or rejected these features, but for me something important would have been lost. They remind me that art draws us into an exciting and dynamic process.

I saw this piece, along with four other prints by Sue Hawksworth, at Colonnade House in Worthing. You can do the same until 17 November.

I warmly commend her work to you.

http://www.suehawksworth.com/

The artist's share.

Karren Urben is an artist based in Ferring, West Sussex.

This is one of her paintings, most recently displayed at Colonnade House in Worthing. Oil on canvas, it measures perhaps 60cm x 60cm.

What do we make of this artwork?

How do the other images we have considered help us engage with this charming piece?

Well, it isn't slick or polished.

It's not one of those images which look as though they have been laboriously copied from a photograph. It doesn't seem to have been achieved by carefully laying grid-lines over an original. It has a freshness, a vibrancy, an immediacy about it. In many ways it looks like a preliminary sketch.The background and flooring seem to have been hurriedly filled in. The child's lower limbs and dress are almost suggested, rather than defined. And yet we see the artist's signature and date in the corner. She considers it finished and complete. It seems to reflect a fleeting moment's observation, not a long-considered study.

More of that later.

But for all its hasty appearance, this painting has lovely elements of observation. Take a look at the child's left hand. There is something immediately authentic about the way this is presented to us. We have seen those open-handed gestures from children, both grasping and releasing at the same time. And what of the child's head and face? This is not a portrait, but it most certainly is of someone. I imagine that people who know this child, will instantly recognise her/him in this image.

Now at this point we need to say something about women painters and paintings of children. I can remember being taught in distant 1960s that artists such as Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt painted children because of their maternal leanings. Art historians, social scientists and critics were barely on the cusp of understanding that perceptions are socially conditioned. Later writers have pointed out that the social spheres of artists like Cassatt and Morisot were confined to the domestic by dominant ideas about women's place. Hopefully, we have moved beyond saying that women are 'naturally' drawn towards painting children. That does not, though, take away the possibility of an affection by the artist (of whichever gender) for the subject.

In conversation, Karren readily tells you that this is in fact her granddaughter.

Now that we know that, did we feel we should have known it before? Can we now discern signs of affection in the painting? Perhaps we can, but I think it would be impossible to say exactly what they are. We have spent much of our time with previous artworks considering what we, the viewer, bring to a work. It's worth remembering that the artist brings a lot too.

What I think we can see here though is the experience of being with a child we care about - and who will not stay this way forever. Perhaps this is why the artist has used seemingly hasty brushstrokes; perhaps this is why detail is often surrendered to impression. This moment is fleeting and will not come again. Perhaps grandparents know this in a way which parents don't fully appreciate yet.

It reminds us of an observation we have made before, that the artist does not seek to convey what the subject looks like; the artist show us what it is like to be in the presence of the subject.

You can see more of Karren Urben's work online.

https://www.instagram.com/karrenurbenpaintings/

https://www.karrenurbenpaintings.com/