the cobalt blue

Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned artist or creative, there is always something new to learn!

Join us and have some fun experimenting with something new under the thorough and helpful guidance of experienced professional artist tutors.

Please find below a list of all the workshops running in Birmingham City Centre and The Custard Factory from March to July this year. Click on the links to find out more on each subject.

Experimental Acrylic Painting Info. Bookings on Eventbrite HERE.

Saturday 9th March 1-4pm – Abstract Landscape

Saturday 13th April 1-4pm – Landscape from photographs and sketches

Saturday 11th May 1-4pm – Expressive Abstract

Saturday 8th June 1-4pm – Structured Abstract

Saturday 13th July 1-4pm – Still Life

Experimental Watercolour Painting Info. Bookings on Eventbrite HERE.

Saturday 16th March 1-4pm – Abstract Landscape

Saturday 20th April 1-4pm – Landscape from photographs and sketches

Saturday 18th May 1-4pm – Expressive Abstract

Saturday 15th June 1-4pm – Flowers

Saturday 20th July 1-4pm – Still Life

Expressive Oil Painting Info. Bookings on Eventbrite HERE.

Saturday 23rd March 1-4pm – Abstract Landscape

Saturday 27th April 1-4pm – Landscape from photographs and sketches

Saturday 25th May 1-4pm – Expressive Abstract

Saturday 22nd June 1-4pm – Flowers/Still life

Experimental Textile Landscapes Info. Bookings on Eventbrite HERE.

Sunday 10th March 12-3pm

Sunday 24th March 12-3pm

Sunday 7th April 12-3pm

Sunday 21st April 12-3pm

Sunday 5th May 12-3pm

Sunday 19th May 12-3pm

Creative Knit workshops! Info and Bookings Here.

March to July 2019

Promote Your Art Work Online

TBC

All sessions.

Cost: £30.00 per session

Contact: Zarina Keyani

E: thecobaltblue27@gmail.com

T: 07707278398

Contemporary Arts

‘Perspectives on Structure’

Show Brochure

A selection of art work by featured Artists:

Scroll down or click here for PDF of the Brooke Smith Show Brochure

Jeannie Brown

Steve Evans

Jamie Fowkes

Dawn Harris

Zarina Keyani

Tom Tebby

Alexi K

Further work to view and prints available on the night.

Click on web-link below for more about the artists.

http://www.thecobaltblue.wordpress.com/artists

Jeannie Brown

1a ‘Broken Ground Series’ Mixed Media, 21×29 POA

‘These images are part of a body of work based on my response to the disparate elements that go to make up an urban landscape. From architecture to graffiti, holes in the road to marks on a wall, all go into building elaborate layers of pattern and texture that form the basis of all of my work. These particular images are my response to the Digbeth area of Birmingham, from and around the Custard Factory. I also consider the people who inhabited this area of the city and the society that they created, from the ‘Peaky Blinder’ tribe of the early 1900’s to the tribes that exist in the city today.’(Jeannie Brown 2015)

1b & 1C ‘Broken Ground Series ‘ Mixed Media, 21×29 POA

1d ‘Broken Ground Series’ Mixed Media, 21×29 POA

Steve Evans

2a ‘Nouvel at the Serpentine’, Ink on Perspex and Board, 60 cm square, 2014 POA

‘I come from a background in structural engineering. During my career, I worked on a wide variety of buildings including a number associated with the arts.

I have had a long standing interest in visual arts and music and towards the end of my career, I began making art. This has developed over the past 12 years or so and a little over twelve months ago I was elected as an Associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. My drawings utilise techniques and formal qualities of technical drawing, before the advent of computer aided draughting – qualities of precision, regimentation, repetition of line and reference to geometry and measurement. These drawings contain minute inconsistencies, the spacing of lines is imprecise, thicknesses of the lines vary. These inconsistencies add qualities that make each piece unique – sometimes creating visual disturbances and illusions beyond the original architectural and formal references. My objective is to make works referring to architecture, sculpture and space becoming, at their most successful, ambiguous, approaching abstraction.’

(Steve Evans ARBSA – 28th May 2015)

2b ‘Satoshi Okado House’, Ink on Perspex and Board, 60 cm square, 2014 POA

Jamie Fowkes

3a ‘Empire, Acrylic on canvas,125 x 175 cms, £1200′

‘Empire is a suggested vision of the future.

I’ve kept this description short because I want the painting to be left to the viewers interpretation. The ambiguity of the forms in the image, creates many possibilities for the viewer to impose narratives on the picture.

I predominantly produce paintings of fabricated models of buildings or structures which I find interesting. The models are fabricated by recreating them out of everyday objects and materials such as cardboard, foil and found objects. These models serve as the subject matter for my paintings.

The models that I make are not exact recreations of real buildings or structures. I aim to create the essence of the building or structure, without paying too much attention to every tiny detail. The rough quality of carelessly made models, translate into carefully crafted, beautiful paintings. My process of creating artwork results in the paintings of such buildings to be considered ‘Baroque’ in style, contrasting heavily with the actual buildings, which are rigid and in-ornate. I also make very minimalistic paintings and drawings, using everyday mundane objects. For example screwed up tin foil and Gaffer Tape as subject matter or in some cases working direct from the built environment itself. My aim is to distil the beauty in these items or landscapes, through the medium of paint or graphite. A beauty that is often overlooked. Painting and drawing to me are very intimate practices, expressing my subject matter with intricate marks of paint and subtle colour nuances or pencil lines that are both flowing and rhythmical, help to create artworks that are detailed and descriptive, but also displays my sense of a stylised beauty in art and my passion for the medium.’ (Jamie Fowkes 2015)

Dawn Harris

4a ‘The Rest is Silence.’52cm x 43cm framed, Charcoal and Gold Leaf on Kozo paper, £225

4b ‘The Rest is Silence I.’ 52cm x 43cm framed, Charcoal and Gold Leaf on Kozo paper £225

4c ‘Do You Remember ?’, 52cm x 43cm Charcoal and Gold Leaf on Kozo paper, £225

Dawn Harris’s work is more about presence than absence when remembering a specific moment. Harris includes the entire scene that was visible rather than remove any of its parts. The parts are instead separated to create a puzzle, a pattern. The intention is to ask the viewer for a moment of attentiveness, to quietly reorganise and reveal what is present.

‘In this body of work I am looking to strip away the extraneous detail, while still maintaining direct contact with observed reality and conventional subject matter. My work attempts to make visible that which is not visible, that which we don’t have a clear vision of, I have used a semi abstract approach to visually hold on to a memory within a visual image to enable a different way of seeing.’ (Dawn Harris 2015)

Zarina Keyani

5a ‘Bluegrayscape’ 2015 40x40cm Oil on Board £400.00

‘My most recent work is about three elements of landscape, sky, horizon, and foreground. The horizon and middle ground are the more natural elements where the foreground above is manifested as structured lines and space which alludes to the man-made. It’s the ever-changing nature of landscape and what it means to those who experience it that interests me. The Garden Of Eden paintings below are about culture and landscape existing in the same space as one interacts with the other causing degeneration and regeneration. The paintings are a celebration of cultural histories involving abstract geometry and the grid, which is often found in quilts and patchwork and The Gardens Of Eden wedding blankets. Depicted here, are a mosaic of small paintings that form the large quilt size composition. Each painting is an individual in its own right and will stand alone as well as part of the larger piece. The translation of textile to paint alludes to the change and adaptation of land and culture. The original beautiful Gardens Of Eden wedding blankets do not function any more as blankets but as visual art and historical documents.’ (Zarina Keyani 2015)

5b ‘The Gardens Of Eden Painting’ 2015 110 pieces Oil On Canvas NFS

Tom Tebby

6a ‘Moving Objects Cutting Through Space No.4’

60x40cm. Printed and cut paper on recycled grey board. Framed

£700

‘The focus of my artistic activity is in landscapes, both urban and natural, both moving and static, draw inspiration from these environments and attempt to represent them within my work.

As an artist, I feel that many elements of our surroundings are overlooked and often ignored; from telegraph wires to derelict buildings, from engine parts and old machines in scrapyards to forgotten spaces beneath motorways and the ‘edgelands’ of our cities. I am inspired by forgotten and lost things, and how I can give them a new context or meaning by utilizing and combining them within an artwork. It is my intention as an artist to represent these things through various mediums and bring attention to them.

I am also inspired by the idea that art, like life, can be in transition and constantly shifting from one thing to the next. I attempt to represent the idea of movement and visual noise using techniques which explore virtual movement, and also the movement of the observer or rather the participant in the artwork.

Every element found in my work will at one point have been part of a photograph I have taken. Each element is manipulated using software to achieve a simplified version. These elements are then combined to create new objects which somehow feel familiar yet unknown. The pieces are then reproduced, often printed, cut into strips or other forms and reassembled into unexpected compositions.’

(Tom Tebby 2015)

Alexi K

7a,7b,7c ‘Architectural Abstracts’ 2015 Ink on Watercolour Paper 5x7Inches POA

‘I love geometry, so it stands to reason that architecture would inspire my art. In all the artistic movements that informed my style, you’ll see cubism, futurism, constructivism and Bauhaus, and architecture was heavily present in all of them. With my pen drawings, I like to subvert the appearance of a solid structure, by deliberately ignoring the rules that I set out at the very beginning. I start with a grid, then proceed to fill it in. No matter how chaotic it looks, I have to make sure that I stop at the correct moment of balance.’ (Alexi K 2015)

About the Cobalt Blue Contemporary

We are a British and International group of contemporary artists based locally to the West Midlands and Worcestershire. Working in a range of disciplines including painting and sculpture, We Artists form the core of ‘The Cobalt Blue Contemporary Arts’. Our goals are to promote and make accessible Art in its many diverse forms here on-line and in real space with projects, pop up exhibitions and via our artist led spaces where work can be viewed by appointment.

The Cobalt Blue Contemporary Arts is not only an artist group and platform, dedicated to creative innovation, integrity and culture, but it is also a gallery and art consultancy where the best contemporary work is sourced and presented to the individual art collector or corporate buyer. If you are interested in collecting fine artwork for your interiors or for your office or corporate space we have a range of contemporary original fine artwork available, and specific requirements can easily be catered for. Please contact Zarina Keyani/Alexi K on 07707278398 or email us at thecobaltblue27@gmail.com.