“The sketchbook is as an essential part of the creative process for many artists and makers. In a literal sense it is a portable tool, ready to record, jot down, sketch, and collect ideas as they emerge. It is usually private space, for exploring freely, developing ideas over time and experimenting with new materials and ways of thinking.
It can also be more than the object, representing the sprawling nature of the creative process which can take place anywhere! Whether it’s a mindmap on a large sheet of paper, a collage on your bedroom wall, or online in 280 characters on Twitter or a collection of images on Instagram, we all have different preferences and ways of working”.
- Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, The Sketchbook | Exhibition 16 April – 11 June 2022
The Sketchbook, at Llantarnam Grange, shares the different approaches of 23 artists, taking a behind the scenes look at how work is created, offering unique insight into artists and makers inspiration, research and process. It will include physical and digital sketchbooks by artists who work in a range of materials, from painting, photography, drawing, textile, ceramics, paper, print and more.
On Using Sketchbooks
Keith Bayliss, 2022
“I use sketch books as repositories for whatever drawn or written notes I make and the roughest of ideas. I intentionally try not to make “frame-able” finished drawings in a sketchbook. Alternatively, if I am to make “finished” drawn work – whether it be in pencil, ink or paint for exhibition, I sit at the kitchen table with a good quantity of paper cut to size, the chosen medium at hand and draw and draw, producing as much as I can and then choose the work that I feel is of an exhibitable quality. The sketchbook images are ideas, rough work, sometimes a diagram, plan or layout. They are the “idea” of a possible image that is yet to be made or the “nuts and bolts” of an exhibition layout or floor plan. I refer to my old sketch books from time to time and re-find ideas that years afterward become a more finished work, be it another drawing, painting or construction. In looking at the sketch books I have chosen I realise that one is from the late 1990’s! With additional drawings by my son Sion! I see also the beginnings of and planning for work that became a recent series of pen and ink drawings called Proserpina. Also past exhibitions – Dreaming Awake, Hortus Conclusus/The Enclosed Garden, St David’s Cathedral Festival installation, Venus. And an installation of constructions and drawings yet to happen – Field of Souls”.
The Sketchbook is at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre from 16 April – 11 June 2022 and features work by:
Billy Adams, Susan Adams, Barnaby Barford, Keith Bayliss, Zena Blackwell, Jo Blaker, Toril Brancher, Matt Caines, Richard Cox, Richard Davies, Osian Grifford, Gethin Hinshelwood, Nichola Hope, Dai Howell, Matthew Lintott, Colette Louise, Jane McKeating, Ben Meredith, Jess Parry, Shelley Rhodes, Beth Swift, Louise Tolcher Goldwyn, Rhiannon Williams
