welcome to my blog

Hey there I’m Cally, welcome to my blog, as this is the 1st one, here’s a little intro about my art career.

I've loved painting and drawing my whole life. After a BTec in art and design at Leeds Art college, it was the textile specialism which took my interest, leading me onto a degree in textile art and craft at Huddersfield Uni. There I learnt many areas of textiles but always with a heavy discipline of painting and drawing for research and development. Graduating in 2010 just 2 years after the global market crash meant there wasn’t a lot of opportunity around for budding creatives… all grants and bursaries were scrapped and with cuts to all public spending, jobs were minimal … So I took the easy route, office temping but always with the plan to pursue my art career….Unfortunately, the corporate rat race was too hard to avoid, quickly falling into the day to day grind that is working life my painting career drifted further and further away. Painting then became my hobby, a place of calm and enjoyment away from the stress of day to day life.

After almost a 2 year break from painting, I signed up for “Find your Joy” a 12 week training course ran by Louise Fletcher. It gave me the structure and motivation I needed to get back into a consistent studio practice and helped me find my style.

This course gave me the confidence to explore my first series of paintings. The theme is exploring the crow and raven as a symbol in classic horror novels and gothic subculture. Using book pages from the all time greats ("Dracula", "Frankenstein" and of course "The Raven") as collage, experimenting with paint, ink and paper, and sanding back to see what happens.

I’m having so much fun exploring this theme and loving what i’ve created so far. I’m looking forward to see what happens next! 

Hopefully you’ve found this interesting, if you’d like to learn more about me then follow along on my socials (links below) or you can sign up to my new mailing list where I will be sharing news and updates on my artwork. click here to sign up.

Stay Weird

Cally :)