This month's cover art comes courtesy of Ian Geary, last month's crossword winner!
Ian and wife, Anne, moved from Sheffield to Chesterfield just before the start of the pandemic.
This has delayed Ian getting involved in the local art scene but he fully intends to contact the Chesterfield Art Club once they start meeting again.
Ian was a member of the Heeley Art Club in Sheffield and has won awards at The Great Sheffield Art Show and The Derbyshire Open Art Exhibition, Buxton.
In the past he has worked in watercolour and oils, subjects of the landscape and buildings of the Peak District, completed in a conventional realist manner.
His current medium is acrylic and he works on what he would describe as ‘themed still life’.
Here he describes the influences and themes to some of his artwork as shown.
For more of Ian's work see:
IG: iangearyartist
Still Life with a Humming Bird
An Aztec theme here with the Humming Bird portrayed as an outlined figure based on one of the ancient ‘Nazca Line’ designs found in the Nazca Desert in Southern Peru. The bird is taking the nectar from Aztec Arrowhead flowers and attracting the attention of a menacing gargoyle like carved head. The mini-drama is completed by the Sun-God like roundel looking down disapprovingly.
Still Life with a Mandarin Duck
A still life with a Chinese theme. I just loved painting the Chinese lantern (Physalis alkekengi) seed cases.
Tribute to Tamara
Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) was one of the leading painters of the Art Deco style. (Art Deco from the ‘Arts Décoratifs’ of the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925).
Here I incorporate her famous painting ‘Self-Portrait in a Green Bugatti’ (1929). I’ve made a few alterations and included some Art Deco-type buildings, based on ones such as the Chrysler building in New York, in the background as she used to do in some of her portraits. She was working in Paris at this time, hence the reference to the Eiffel Tower.
Still Life and All That Jazz
My tribute to the Staffordshire ceramic designer Clarice Cliff. I have placed her ‘Age of Jazz’ figures of the 1930’s in an imaginary Jazz Club setting with Art Deco-inspired surround.
A Christmas Still Life
A combination of ‘The Constant Tin Soldier’ fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen and Tchaikovsky’s ballet ‘The Nutcracker’.
Three Shires Head
Netheredge Lantern Festival
Castleton
The Morris Men
A Bluebell Wood
Text & Images: Ian Geary