A Sargent Attribution

I have just been prompted to attribute this painting of mine (from an old blog post here) entitled "Flamenco" to John Singer Sargent.  This I gladly do and apologise for not entitling it  "After Sargent" in the first place. 


I have been back to the original painting which is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston  

and in the course of googling it I came across the impressive and invaluable John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery  for which I am most grateful for Sargent's studies for the painting:

BACK from the Blue

If you thought I had committed blog suicide, so did I, yikes - having posted nothing since August. So I am just back from the brink with  a desperate offering of random leaves from my sketch book until I get some more inspiration.  Hello to all my old chums whose blogs I've neglected to read as well. Why?  I dunno. Sorry!

 Flamenco after El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent

 Pakistan

 Peep Toes

RW

Sunsuit

Toy horses

Bridle

All images ©  Rosie West 2012

What I'd like for Christmas ..

A plaster cast from the Parthenon Frieze

to go with the hand I bought in a specialist Paris art shop 

and the foot from the Sir John Soane Museum

All images © Rosie West

Nature Morte

Please look away now if you don't like ex-animals (below).  I painted them  at The Prince's Drawing School  in Shoreditch under the tutelage of Henry Gibbons Guy who  gave them a poignant Chardin style setting in the changing light of our fourth-floor studio.  

The artists' prey was contributed by the wonderful Delia, one of our fellow students, who brought it from Norfolk via her London deep freeze.  Where a squirrel or a rabbit needed  post mortem first aid, as it were, she would gently bathe it and then blow dry the fur with her hairdryer.  As a gesture towards students who might be squeamish, it was a fine one.Nobody could say that our models didn't look pristine and peaceful.

All images © Rosie West

Tallyho! The Adventures of Little Miss Jodhpurs

My virtual world of horsewomanship ..

All images © Rosie West

Secret Desires

Now that London's Royal College of Art's Secret Sale (in aid of student bursaries and support) is over, I can reveal my contribution.  Over 2,800 postcards are illustrated by artists and students and exhibited anonymously.  Each costs £45 and the game is to pick one by an expensive artist like Damien Hirst or Grayson Perry and not get landed with a Rosie West.


Artists generally don't like to pin down the meaning of their work.  I suppose mine are supposed to be seductive as little pictures in themselves and then remind one of the gross price of property; they glibly juxtapose the tradition of painting with nasty material values; or simply stand as a painterly documentation of a common phenomenon like the property ads blah blah blah..


They are possibly rather sketchy but you have to take a run at them since you only get given
three postcards and there's no room to mess up even more.

I have no idea how many of them sold but I know that my son pointed out one of mine to his girlfriend not realising his old ma had done it.  Needless to say he didn't buy it.  

All illustrations © Rosie West

PET

If I offend dog lovers by dressing pooches up in frocks, I am only using these sad little confections as a metaphor for what we tend to do with our human pets.

That Pinking Feeling

Pink is a delicious colour but little girls, particularly the ‘tween’ market, are bombarded with pink merchandising opportunities that dominate their wardrobes, their accessories, their worlds.  This seems to pose no other narrative, no other gender choice than a ‘girliness’ that is becoming commodified and toxic: contaminated with sentimentality, anxiety and a sophistication that only accelerates the loss of childhood innocence.

Most of these paintings were made for an exhibition at Southampton Solent University in 2008.  The horrible phenomenon of the beauty pageant was an insistent idea behind this somewhat uncomfortable project.  

Caged Bird

Candy Lamb

Are You Sure You Really Love Me?

 Bunny Cuddles

Play Time

All images © Rosie West

Scenes From The Mess In My House

Uh oh, I'm panicking again because I need to do another post in a hurry.  Here is a selection of my artwork interspersed with my mess.  That's it, really.

Toot Toot!  Back Soon

In Berkeley Square...

A nightingale sang...

And in Moscow.  I always wondered how a nightingale really sang.  Wait for its sublime little voice to
develop..