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delpha hudson

@delphahudson

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Painting women and ecologies of care.
Writing & performance @theatreoftheself

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Very much looking forward to showing ‘Our secret grace unnamed, invisible, surviving’ as part of the Falmouth Painting Platform.

Alongside a sharing of painting, there are talks and discussions all weekend about contemporary painting, kicking off with a PV this evening at 6-7.30pm

All welcome and free entry all weekend. Check out @falmouthpaintingplatform & website for more details.

#falmouthpaintingplatform #contemporarypainting #falmouthuniversity #falmouthart Delpha Hudson with colourful mythological painting including Greek and Cornish references taken in Falmouth University by @delphahudson

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a year ago

‘Grandma’s Story’, found object, acrylic on linen, wool & red cord

Hand sewing the final sections of the chair with sutures and pins felt like creating a Frankenstein of body parts. Haven’t finalised whether to let the pins stay - it depends on whether I decide that it is a chair to be ‘safely’ sat on (perhaps even with a simple recording device that you can listen or add your own short fable or story?).

There is a regal aspect to this grand old matriarchal chair and it weighs a ton (iron and horsehair if not gold!) She was abandoned in the street and has been rescued and re-covered after many generations of being handed down. She is is the conjunction and culmination of many stories, all of them her own.

Another unfinished detail is the wool stuffing and cord issuing from the right arm, intimating exposure of internal organs, ageing and the female body; old women as holders of stories, death and knowledge, and cultural ambivalence.

Her covering is simple and hand/homemade with printed patterns, as well as hybrid stories and figures, that follow William Morris’s advice on pattern

‘nature has to look as if it’s continuing to grow’,

(like the reference to the beanstalk story on the front of the chair.). Some of the text references an embroidered section of Morris’s famous four poster bed made by his daughter May Morris.

She is the sum of stories from many different cultures with hybrid monstrosities as well as endearing Western tropes. She is a fuddy duddy old chair and re-imagining her appeal and usefulness in a historical domesticated way is on-going #wip

#grandmasstory #contemporarypainting #contemporaryart #storytelling #babayaga #oldwomen #niceornasty #ambivalence #witches #containersofstories #personificationofachair #she #interactivesculpture #williammorris #pattern #maymorris #foundobject #surrealdomestic #delphahudson #tellingtales taken in Delpha Hudson Art by @delphahudson

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3 years ago

‘As above, so below’ painting installation on the floor of my studio with Cornish egg stones and teacup 140x140x15cm

Thinking about cyclical renewal, magic carpets and transformation I’ve created a simulacra of a fireside rug decorated in a grotesque style.

To follow the story-cycle (8 sections around the octagon you have to physically walk around it. The figures embody women’s stories from puberty to maturity with humorous fantastical creatures in the arabesque patterns. The extra ornaments of local egg stones (a pre-Christian symbol of hope and renewal) appear to weight it down as well as reference local stone circles; the teacup a surreal domesticity.

There are multiple references in the choice of title, a phrase from an old adage that paraphrases an ancient verse of the emerald tablet, a hermetic text from the 8th century. Some of the writing about this ancient text reference the cyclical nature of human symbolism and its constant re-imaging of the relationship between man and the natural world. Evoking age-old connections and mirroring the world around us enables connectivity with the natural world and each other.

#connectivity #asabovesobelow #transformation #paintinginstallation #firesiderug #surrealdomestic #cornisheggstones #stonecircles #teacup #care #cyclical #grotesque #womensstories #studiotoday #delphahudson
#paintingwomen taken in Delpha Hudson Art by @delphahudson

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3 years ago

‘Rising Sap’ gouache and ink on paper, 42x30cm exploring our relationships with trees and the seasons.

More about seeing sweet chestnut trees on my travels @theatreoftheself

#womentrees #paintingtrees #paintingwomen Treewomen painting delpha Hudson taken in Burley In Wharfedale, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom by @delphahudson

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6 days ago

Currently on some travels northwards enjoying seeing trees that predominantly remain green for now. Further explorations our relationship with trees with a series of anthropomorphic women-trees:

‘Shedding: preparing for winter’, 32x32cm ink & gouache.

#womantree #arborealrights #ecofeminism Woman tree painting: shedding. Delpha Hudson by @delphahudson

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9 days ago

Experimenting with a painting installation: ‘A treatise on Arboreal Rights’ 200x160cm. I found some golden yellow translucent cloth (tulle) in a charity shop and the written texts make connections between the rights of trees and the rights of women.

Image 1: shows only one of the finished hangings
Image 2: close-up of translucent texts

Reminding me of installations I made 20 years ago; hangings that are semi- permeable, with words that are invisible until held up to the light. Combining such hangings with a painting aims to engage a different kind of viewing with the possibility of seeing the painting through a different lens & an experiential tactile engagement as you move through the hangings.

#wip #atreatiseonarborealrights #paintinginstallation Arboreal rights painting installation with translucent cloth delpha Hudson taken in Delpha Hudson Art by @delphahudson

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11 days ago

Shiny detail as it dries ready for the next stage, from ‘Batten down the hatches we’re in for a rough ride’, oil and mixed media on canvas, 50x50x4cm, 2021-present.

Making the ineffable visible, painting is a meditation, a conversation with now, the past and the future. A connective transformative force, painting engages with the human condition.

Fabulation is a useful term for painting; simultaneously about ideas and the material processes used to make them. Ever changing conversations between intention and process, it is a license to reflect’ on transformation and ‘dream the changes it might possess’ (Elkins, 2000, p.124).

#processualpainting #impermanenceofpaint #transformingpainting Detail of figure from ongoing painting processes delpha Hudson taken in Delpha Hudson Art by @delphahudson

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15 days ago

A small detail from new-old work: revisiting paintings that were never truly finished - perhaps they never will be. Paring back, destroying a bit of a painting to move forward. There’s a regenerative power in alchemical materials and processes that refuse to stop metamorphosing and are always ‘in process’.

Remembering nothing is absolute and enjoying slow marinations where materials and thoughts leach and diffuse.

Image details from: ‘Our most evolutionary strength as a species..’ oil and other media, 50x50x4cm, 2022-

#paintingwomen #metamorphosis #continuouspainting Figure details mother and child process colour delpha Hudson taken in Delpha Hudson Art by @delphahudson

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16 days ago

‘Connective landscapes’, mixed media on canvas diptych, antique oak frame and gold string, 74x62x3cm

‘Connective landscapes’ contains a corporeal desire to align ourselves with nature. Disruptions and transitions of the landscape genre offer relational iconographic identities that are inextricably linked together, a ritual of belonging that shapes our place in the world around us.

Weaving discourses and value systems in which embodiment is permeable, mutable and inseparable from the natural world, the painting reconfigures hierarchies, celebrates women and social and environmental ecologies.

Two canvases are elaborately bound to the frame using gold string, denying its supplementary function with a rhythm that underpins connectivity. The bindings unite fragments with a nod to Constructivist ideas about space, time and movement in ‘stringed’ work by Gabo and Hepworth.

A perfect reference for its first inclusion in a show @penwithgallery This @nsanewlyn show continues everyday until 24th October.

#connectivelandscapes #weareboundtonature #enmeshedart Women and nature painting by delpha Hudson taken in Penwith Gallery by @delphahudson

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19 days ago

With my painting ‘Connective Landscapes’ at the @nsanewlyn opening on Friday. Great turn out @penwithgallery -even the evening sun turned out in classic colours.

Such a wonderful group of artists- too many to mention by name but a few photo highlights: painting by @florencepenny installation by @andrewswanartist film by @pwilsonsmith .. David Symonds, @pedleyvivian @volkerstoxart @emmadigerudwhite

So much more to see. Show continues everyday 10-5 (except Sundays) until October 24th. Huge thanks to @seamus7160 and all of the hanging team.

‘Connective Landscapes’, mixed media on canvas diptych, antique oak frame and gold string, 74x62x3cm

#stivesseptemberfestival #stivesart #connectivelandscapes Delpha with her painting Connective Landscapes taken in St Ives, Cornwall by @delphahudson

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20 days ago

Reading Elkin’s book ‘What is painting?’ is like painting porn, awakening passions and sublimated urges-about materials, the paint itself and how the body is implicated in the process.

His words illuminate my relationship with paint and painting. I miss the the messy visceral stench and viscosity of certain materials in my studio, ‘the perpetual isolated re-invention’ and the ‘unaccountable changes’ in processes that are a metaphor themselves for metamorphosis and the unexpected..

..yet ‘old discarded thoughts become new ones and the work begins again’.

Excited about new (and old) directions in my laboratory of paint and ideas.

Image: detail of painting from 2016.

#studiotoday #laboratoryofpaint #elkinsonpainting Detail of figure in painting with unusual processes delpha Hudson taken in Delpha Hudson Art by @delphahudson

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a month ago

Details from ‘Mother trees whisper we are here’ oil and acrylic on canvas, 200x160cm

As with all my large paintings this was made to resemble intricate woven hangings or tapestries with folkloric fables and bizarre histories. Frequently drawing on medieval patterns and imagery these are enchanted landscapes; rich in colour, they create alternative worlds and layered terrains.

Subtle narratives unfold between shifting scales, large and small, they dissolve fact and fiction, interweaving myth and reality; a patterned complexity symbolic of inner and outer spaces.

Distorting and dissolving reality, they nonetheless contain resonances of people, places and landscapes. There is both beauty and unease formed by painted gestures that ask questions. We do not know the answers. We must find the questions first.

#paintingwomen #mothertrees #connectivelandscapes Detail of mother trees painting by delpha Hudson taken in Delpha Hudson Art by @delphahudson

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a month ago