Author: Alison M Williams

Hello! I love to create and make one of a kind mixed media paintings and jewellery pieces with a largely oceanic theme, I like to think about the environment and how what I'm doing impacts upon the world. I'm always striving to make my work more eco-friendly and sustainable, using many recycled and found materials in my work. I'm a single mother to two amazing little rascals and I love to get them involved in creative projects too! I'm currently on a mission to leave my part time job, work for myself full time on my creative endeavours and become a more organised individual. Oh, and I want to get us all to Disney land. Life is a juggling act!

Small explorations

Hello,

This week has been a busy one and I’ve been at work for the whole of the last 2 weekends so I’ve been trying to fit in a little bit of artyness here and there. I’ve been thinking about how I can make smaller pieces and some wearable art as quite often I’m so busy trying to juggle work, home, family and social life, I just don’t have a lot of time to create full scale paintings. I also think it would be good to make larger quantities of my work on a small scale to be more accessible to people. So I’ve mainly been focusing on beginning some miniatures and doing a little experimentation with that in mind.

My lovely friend Jade also reminded me that during my creative lull I did actually make a small piece that she liked and that I’d given her, and I hadn’t photographed it, so I can share that now.

I don’t think I gave this one a name. It was something I made quite quickly, and evolved from pure play and experimenting. There aren’t many materials used, just a used baby wipe, some tissue paper and a little leftover cement sand from when I had some building work done which I then painted over. It’s darker than my usual work, but that might be because I was in a slightly darker place when I made it!

Here are the little pieces I’ve been playing with this week:

I thought they’d be suitable for very little frames, I quite like the idea of doing a range of ‘small specimens’ which could be displayed together like little curiosities, or perhaps turning them into greetings cards. They’re just the beginnings of an idea that I’d quite like to continue developing.

The last one isn’t finished but I love the idea of using the little soy sauce fish bottles from sushi packs. I’ve been saving them for years and plan to make a large piece with a shoal of them in all different colours at some point. I did use one in one of my paintings ‘Ariels playground’ and just think they add a bit of playfulness whilst using something that would usually be discarded. Heaven only knows how many of these things must get thrown away every day. I wonder how many of these plastic fish are bobbing around with the real ones…

I sliced this one in half with a scalpel then stuck some iridescent film I found in my craft stash inside and sealed it in with some pearly pink paint before glueing it to the card. I’ll probably add something round the edges to seal it in before painting the rest. I’ll try and get it finished this week.

Then I’ve also tinkered with another small work in progress that’s been hanging around in my studio for ages. I think it’s a bit weird looking, and not one of my favourite pieces but it exists, so I will finish it! It already has a name: Clocktopus!

Not really sure where this will end up at the moment but I think it has a tiny amount of potential!

Lastly I’ve decided to use up some celestial bits I had left over from another project on this frame I rescued from the bin at my local charity shop, all I’ve done is position the pieces at the moment but I think this might be a relatively easy piece to upcycle, we shall see if I can get it done before I speak to you next week!

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The Slow Return

Hi again 🙂

Since my mirror project I have been feeling well and truly bitten by the art bug, and still taken by the idea of trying to get through the massive pile of discarded-halfway-through paintings that are cluttering up my studio space.  However, I am a little time-poor, so I decided to start small with an 8 inch square canvas that I’d already attempted to salvage once with an odd looking doodly painting that I just found really ugly. 

I didn’t take any photos of the ‘before’, just started sticking stuff on top.  I found a piece of foam packaging shaped like a donut on the floor in my friend’s workshop, so plonked that in the centre and started adding things over it- baby wipes, tissue, play dough, an experimental crackle paste I made with tile grout powder, acrylic paint and PVA glue, silica gel beads and twist ties.

I bought a job lot of jewellery from Vinted recently that had a really nice pendant with a piece of iridescent shell as a backing.  I tend not to wear much costume jewellery because of an allergy to some metals but I loved the shape of the pendant and thought it might be perfect for using to make impressions in things like clay or play dough.  I took off the ring at the top, filed it down so it was just a circle and used some 2 part silicone mould medium to make a mould.

I feel slightly conflicted about doing that because it will likely only have a limited use, but I’d had the mould medium since I was at uni so I guess it was better to use it than waste it!  I’ll have to see what other things I can use it for and how many different ways I can incorporate that shape.  Anyway, I used a piece of play dough to make an impression and added that to the centre when it had completely dried out.  It did warp slightly but then I don’t really mind that as it’s a bit more in keeping with the organic style I like things to be in!

After I had applied all the textural bits I felt necessary, I gave the whole thing a coat of creamy-beige paint so I could get a feel for how it looked overall.  Before that there were different colours randomly dotted around so it was hard to envisage where to take the piece next as my eye kept being distracted. 

I added a watered down wash of brown to sink into all the recesses of the texture, then went back over the surface with a pale cream, just rubbing it over with my fingertip to contrast with the brown in the lower areas, which helped show up all the details.

I liked just how much all the texture was visible here but felt it made it look a little messy and too busy.

I started adding greens and grey, then just tinkered around with it, blending with all the colours in various different areas, highlighting a few of the raised textures with some gold and playing around with blending the background until I felt it looked right. 

This is what I ended up with:

‘The Slow Return’

I’ve often wanted to explore the relationship between nature and the man-made whilst creating my work. There’s something I find quite visually appealing about the juxtaposition of those two contrasting themes, maybe because they’re so intertwined in daily life in most of the places we go. I also keep returning to the idea that nature is so much more powerful than we are.

We often behave as though humanity and nature are separate entities; building over it, reshaping it, extracting from it and trying to control it, disregarding the damage we cause and forgetting that we are part of it.

With this piece, I wanted to blur the distinction between the organic and the manufactured. The circular and spiral motifs could be interpreted as weathered mechanisms or forgotten remnants of a man-made structure, while the surrounding textures suggest roots, erosion, mineral deposits and growth. As the forms merge together, it becomes difficult to tell where the natural ends and the man-made begins.

As I worked on it, I found myself thinking about the persistence of nature; how it erodes, reshapes and absorbs even the things we think of as permanent.

I want to create art that serves as a reminder that if we continue to see ourselves as separate from nature, it will eventually reclaim what we have built and destroy the systems upon which we depend.  Perhaps our future depends less on trying to control and exploit the natural world and more on learning to protect it and work alongside it, because nature itself will endure, but we may not!

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Getting back to it…

Hello, after a rather lengthy hiatus I’ve been trying to get some art making going again lately and thought I ought to come back here to record what I’ve been up to.

After my Dad passed away in late 2024, I seemed to lose most of my creative mojo (aside from the few weeks very soon after his death when I became strangely obsessed with nail art and bought every supply under the sun with the intention of becoming a fully fledged nail technician- funny how grief can affect you!). Recently though, I’ve started to feel those nagging creative urges knocking on doors inside my brain again.

This painting was the first artistic thing I’d done in ages. It’s a little dark and slightly creepy but I guess maybe that had to be released! Oh and I needed a new peg bag, so naturally thought I could start a new business making all sorts of different themed ones… Until I actually made one and realised just how long it took me to make a simple one and the idea became less appealing!

I’ve been busy selling things on eBay to try to alleviate the cost of living crisis a little and some of those things have had to have some minor repairs or spruce-ups so I’ve been putting some of my skills to use there. However, it’s not quite the same as getting all my textural junk and paints out and just playing and creating to see what happens!

I was looking through some of my friend Chris’ amazing artwork recently and I was struck by both how creatively talented and prolific he is, and it spurred me on to start, so I owe him a thank you!

My Mum has also inspired me lately because she has decided not to start any new projects until she’s finished all her many and varied unfinished crafty things, so I resolved to pick up some things I was working on before and start thinking about how to finish them.

I began with a lovely circular wooden framed mirror that I’d bought from a car boot sale last summer which wasn’t in the best condition as it was quite scratched. I decided I would give it a complete overhaul and cover the wood entirely with something textural. I’d sanded the wood really well in the hopes that whatever I applied would stick, masked off the mirror with leftover washi tape and started to cover it with some bits I had lying around near my workspace – a couple of wet wipes and tissue I’d used to clean things from previous projects, some twist ties, foam play clay that my friend gave me as her daughter didn’t use it and some texture paste I made with leftover tile grout. I’d gotten about halfway round the frame adding bits and pieces and then left it gathering dust on my easel for months!

Here’s some studio chaos and work in progress:

I got quite excited about it once I got going again and it probably only took two or three days to finish. The best bit for me is once I’ve built up all the texture and can start colouring it, because then it starts to come alive. Little areas of interest pop out and can then be tinkered with, perhaps adding a few other textured bits here and there. Anyway, here it is 😊

I’m actually more pleased than usual with how this piece turned out! It’s got me wondering what other ordinary objects might lend themselves to this sort of treatment!

I’ve already begun working on the next unfinished piece, (a small square canvas that I’d already painted over with a peculiar doodly thing that I hated!) so hopefully there will be something else to show for the coming week.

I’m also having a lot of thoughts lately about the use of AI in art, so I might muse about that some more and share some of my ponderings!

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Easter break…

Hello 👋

I decided to have a little break over the Easter holidays as things have been getting on top of me a bit lately but have managed to do a couple of creative things, I upcycled a couple of my old vests by tie dying them with bleach and painted over a small canvas that I’d done before but didn’t like.

I have mainly been selling some of my ridiculous hoard of belongings on eBay and Vinted over the past week or so and I have added these also.

Here’s my little painting, only 17cm square 😊

Ursula’s Lair

I will try and be a bit more productive next week!

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Blog…

This week’s title helpfully suggested by my son Remy, as I was struggling to think of something witty.  It actually seems quite appropriate as this week has been pretty devoid of new ideas, unfortunately my creative slump has continued and I haven’t been able to muster much enthusiasm.  I probably just need to eat more healthy food!

I have done a little work on my junk piece and my friend Jade suggested I use the colours in these photos of a deteriorating ornate gate as I took them on the same walk I collected all the bits and pieces on:

So I decided to have a play with those in my new home-made sketchbook as I’ve been meaning to get going with that for a while.

Then I made a larger version as this week’s painting.  I don’t like it!

I really haven’t been feeling it at all this week but I did quite enjoy playing in the sketchbook as there wasn’t any pressure for it to be anything in particular so I think maybe that’s what I need to carry on doing until something inspires me.  Or at least until the vitamins from the healthy food kick in!

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A bit burned out…

Hello again 😊

I seem to have lost the creative flow a bit lately and with all sorts of other things being a bit stressful, I haven’t achieved an awful lot over the last couple of weeks.  I had a free weekend this weekend and honestly felt desperate for a holiday, however, funds only permitted a ‘staycation’, so I’ve tried to make the most of having some alone time and have done as many soothing things as possible.  I made a good start on my garden, went swimming,  did some baking and did this miniature painting.

It’s only 10cm square and actually I think it looks better in person, the colours aren’t quite as dark in real life and you can’t see the glittery bits so well here.  Anyway, it’s made with a wire twisty tie thing, a found flat back gem, a couple of bits from some old jewellery and a circular something I found on a pavement.

I’ve also been working on the first of the series I plan to do using bits I find whilst out with my friend Jade whilst she’s litter picking.  It seemed to take a very long time to prime the board, probably because it was covered in a very thirsty fabric!

All the bits of rubbish were found around my village on one hour’s walking around.  This is the process so far, I wanted to add some varied texture to the canvas to start with, particularly as it already had some bits sewn on- I wanted to disguise them and add a bit of interest.  I played around with the bits and pieces until I liked the arrangement.  This is how I have stuck them:

So now I will paint over the whole lot and decide if it needs any further textured bits before adding colour.  No idea at this point what colour palette to go with, maybe something that says ‘urban decay’!

Hopefully I’ll get my art mojo back a bit this week and have a bit more to show next time🙂

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Mother’s Day Messy Play!

So after a very unproductive week art wise, I had a bit of a panic realising there was no piece of art to blog about and made a special Mother’s Day request of my children that they join me in a collaborative effort to create something that we can keep and hang on our walls.  It was however quite late in the day, so I had to dash around gathering all the bits we needed and get them both focused on the task in hand so that they wouldn’t be too late to bed (I failed a bit there, oops!)  Anyway, I think we all had fun 😊

What could possibly go wrong?!

I got out the messy mat, found a charity shopped canvas and gathered some old tile grout, a couple of boxes of recycled bits and bobs, some paint, brushes and glue and laid it all out on our dining table.

Jesse got to work mixing up some grout with pva glue, then he and Remy both smeared that over the canvas, ready for a layer of different cardboard, tissue paper and other textured papers, which all got slathered in copious amounts of pva mixed with water and the whole thing was very soggy!  They then chose some circular bits and pieces and stuck them where they wanted over the top and ran off to play Fortnite 🙄 whilst I dried it all with my heat tool.

I then gave it all a coat of white paint and called the boys back for the colouring stage.

I got them to choose a colour each, Remy chose cyan and Jesse chose dark blue.  I decided to add yellow ochre, magenta and white as I thought there would be lots of potential for interesting colour mixes, and they seemed to like my additions.  We all got to work playing with the paint and blending the colours into eachother.  Remy lost interest after a while but Jesse loves art so the pair of us carried on tinkering until Jesse also got fed up, then it was just me doing a few bits of detail.

This is where we left it.  I think it maybe needs just a little more but Jesse liked it like this so I think we’ll at least pause for a while, maybe hang it up somewhere and see how we feel a while later 😊

So now we have this lovely thing to keep that a bit of each of us has gone in to.  I can’t think of a better thing to do on Mother’s Day 🥰

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A sketchy week!

Well, there hasn’t been an awful lot of art getting done this week but my poor Dad has been in hospital so I’ve spent quite a bit of time going between Leicestershire and Suffolk as well as looking after my boys and going to work. 

However, I have managed to finish off a circular painting I began years ago, as well as start a new sketchbook and go on a treasure hunt for objects to work into a painting and do my daily sketch, so it hasn’t been a disaster!

Here’s the strange circular piece:

‘Love On The Rocks’

I’m quite excited about the sketchbook work, I could do with having a place to experiment a bit more, to loosen up and be less precious.  I stopped at the Sue Ryder charity shop in Downham Market on my way to visit my parents this week and picked up a couple of books to turn into sketchbooks.

I tried to pick a couple that I thought looked old and less likely to be bought (sorry cricket fans!)

My lovely friend Jan had shown me how to turn old books into sketchbooks; it’s important to remove a page every 4ish pages along to allow for room for the book to grow as you cover the pages, and then once that’s done, stick every 2 pages together to make them more sturdy for working on top of.

So I started on the cricket book, I’ve begun covering over the cover but couldn’t wait to get playing so I did this on the first page:

I don’t often do drips but I quite like this!

I went out for a walk with my friend Jade whilst she was working for the council doing litter picking, and whilst she collected big bits of rubbish, I picked up all the little bits I could find that I thought would incorporate well into a painting.  I think we were out for about an hour and I couldn’t believe how many interesting things I found. 

So that’s something I’ll hopefully get done this week, as I plan to accompany Jade on many more of her litter picks.  We were chatting about it and came up with a plan that I’ll collect enough for a painting on each walk and then perhaps put on an exhibition later in the year.  Thought it might be thought provoking for the residents of my village!

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Mermaids and Fairies

‘Mermaid’s Escape’

It’s been a busy half term week this week so I haven’t been able to create quite as much as I would have liked, however I did manage to sit and doodle this (mainly watercolour) piece as well as finally finishing one of the pieces I’ve been struggling with for a long time. 

‘Garden of the Fairy Prince’

This is not one of my favourites and I still think it looks a bit odd but I’d gotten to the point where I was just fed up with looking at it, so I’m calling it done and it’s time to move on!

I’ve also been working on the travelling book with my artist friend across the road, Jan, doing my daily drawing and working on some bits for card making, so I’ve managed to squeeze a bit of creativity in to the spare moments!

I still haven’t finished either of the commissioned pieces and think I will outright refuse to do any in future!  I did show my colleague a photo of his work in progress and fortunately he approved, so I will try and get it done now.

I’d also quite like to find a solution with this rather large spiral painting that I began about 3 years ago as I think it has some potential.  I tried a few different ways of finishing the outer edges but nothing really felt right.  I think I know what I want to do with the central blue spiral so perhaps I’ll start there.

I’d like to do some experimental work in my sketchbook this week alongside getting at least one painting finished.  I’m finding it really useful doing the daily drawing in the book my Mum bought me for Christmas and it’s giving me lots of ideas for future paintings so feel like I should invest more in sketchbooks in general.

Cheerio for now 😊

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Valentines Venture

Hello 😊

Alongside working on some of my unfinished paintings (spurred on by all my investigations into beating creative block!) I have found myself making up a bunch of greetings cards this week.

I was quite enamoured with the fun technique I used to make the one for my friend last week, so when I was out with another friend who was shopping for a Valentines card and she was scoffing at the ridiculous price tag for what was quite frankly boring tat, I told her I’d make her one!

I started of plastering a piece of card with red, pink and purple, but hated how garish it looked, so chose an ‘off primary’ palette which I thought was quite pleasing when I started swirling and doodling with it and I liked how the colours blended together where they overlapped.

I then added some copper paint and glittery accents and when it was all dry I got a square die cutter and hovered over it, using it as a viewfinder and moving around until I found a section that I thought worked well.

I painted a piece of cardboard toastie packaging I’d saved with the same red, highlighted the wavy crinkles with some copper paint and cut out heart shapes, then placed them on top to finish it off.

The lighting wasn’t great here and it looks a little yellower than it actually did.

I had quite a bit of the card leftover so got to work using it up on some more Valentines cards…

Then my children needed a last minute birthday card for their cousin, so I used the same technique and made this:

Here’s the sheet before I started chopping it up:

I love the fact that it doesn’t have to look perfect as a whole and the freedom it gives to just make marks and play with the paint.

So I made more…!

I thought I’d use the same technique to try and salvage a piece of art I’d been struggling with for a while. I had wanted to do a green piece on it, I seem to find greens difficult and wanted to challenge myself, but I really didn’t like what it had become, so painted over it. I thought it would work well with this method as it was on watercolour paper with other materials added on top, but mostly not too thickly, so I’d still be able to cut out some pieces.

Here it was in one of its earlier stages:

I didn’t take a photo of how it looked just before I covered it all up, but never mind because it was ugly! So, I still need to conquer green… Anyway here’s what I did to it. I used the same palette as for the Valentines cards.

I had a frame that I wanted to use so I had to find a section that worked well but that I could actually cut out without hitting any of the raised elements like the bits of zip, Washers and beads!

I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out. Once I’d cut it out I tweaked it a bit, adding a few little bits here and there, then signed it.

I’ll use the rest to make more cards, Mother’s day approaches!

Have a lovely week 😊

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