BARN BURD DESIGNS ~ BY KATHERINE T~ BEADS~JEWELRY~ART

September Challenge

 from Art Bead Scene

View of the Pond at Charleston, East Sussex

by Vanessa Bell

c.1919

Oil on canvas, 79.8 x 84 cm

Collection: Museums Sheffield

About the Art

At the Royal Academy Schools Vanessa Bell was taught by and admired the work of John Singer Sargent. She was also greatly influenced by Whistler, and in the final pages of this letter to her friend Margery Snowdon she described the influence of his technique on her painting style.
Bell's first commissioned work was a portrait of Lady Robert Cecil. This was also the first work she ever exhibited, at the New Gallery, London, in 1905.
After her marriage in 1907, Bell continued to paint portraits, but with the birth of her son Julian in 1908, her paintings adopted more domestic themes such as still lifes and interiors

About the Artist

Vanessa Bell, 1879–1961, was a British painter and interior designer who established her reputation as part of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group. Her most innovative works, which fused fine art and decorative design, show the influence of post-Impressionism, Matisse and Cubism.

Bell was the elder sister of writer Virginia Woolf. 

In 1906, when Bell started to think of herself as an artist, she formed the Friday Club in order to create a place in London that was more favourable to painting. Vanessa was encouraged by the Post-Impressionist exhibitions organised by Roger Fry and she copied their bright colours and bold forms in her artworks. In 1914, she turned to abstraction.

Bell rejected the examples of Victorian narrative painting and rejected a discourse on the ideal and aberrant qualities of femininity. Some of Vanessa Bell’s works were related to her personal life.

Bell is one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury group. She exhibited in London and Paris during her lifetime, and has been praised for innovative works during her early maturity and for her contributions to design.

 I love this painting I like the subtle colors  and the way that the artist used her brush strokes. It feels like a water color to me but I'm sure in person the brush work would show more clearly. The play of light as it comes in the window seems to mimic the pond and how the trees are reflected in it. I love a play on 2 to 3 dimensionality, it is how I like to work visually. It is not all that easy to express what you need to say with a flat two dimensional plane and get just the right enough information with the three dimensional to not take away completely the two. Sounds confusing? It can be I find that I have to simplify my work which is what I see in this beautiful painting.

My bracelet is made with a polymer clay bracelet bar made by myself, Czech beads, freshwater pearls and jasper. I tried to express the softness with a monochromatic palette and nature and brushstrokes with the pattern and texture. I also used alcohol inks for coloring.