Willow Baby: A Preview

I've just finished the illustrations for a new book that's set to be published by Paravion Press. It's called Willow Baby and it's a fairytale-style poem written by violinist and story-teller Max Baillie. It's the first in a cycle of 5 poems. Here's a little taste. 

I normally work with fineliners, which produce a very steady line, but for this book, I wanted a look more akin to a woodcut, so I used a japanese Pentel brush pen. It lets you make hair-fine lines as well as thick. generous ones, and it gives you less control, which can be a good thing. For the colours, I used Cretacolor AquaMonolith watercolour pencils.  Here, in fact, is the colour scheme: 

I chose autumney colours, warm and sort of faded. And as you can see, I'm big on patterns, whether it's the surface of water, high grass or tangled hair. 

A date is yet to be set for the book launch, and I will of course post about it when I know. But in the meantime, you can find more of Paravion's publications here, and see Max's  website here.

Sleeping with Wolves

Hey everyone! Here's new print from the Feral series. Just finished it last night. It's available in the Fox & Comet Shop.

Laptop Design

A recent private commission. The owner of this laptop wanted a design based on an old sketch of mine of the Seine river in Paris. I used Porcelaine Pens, which are normally intended for ceramics, but work well on most smooth surfaces. The range of colours is narrow, but I was able to achieve a nice, impressionistic effect by layering and a creating a dense texture. I'm really pleased with how it came out.

5 Muses

I recenctly did a job for The Jerwood Charitable Foundation, who asked me to make 2 images for their promotional material - a postcard and a business card. They wanted something that expressed creativity, energy and diversity. I immediately started thinking about heraldry, and those wonderful spear-clutching bears, roaring gryphons, flag-waving unicorns and other imaginary animals that seem to rule that world. My idea was to create a kind of muse, but instead of the greek muses, who looked like lovely young women, these would be fierce animal hybrids with flaming wings. I played around with a lot of different animal-part combinations, trying to keep them unusual and even outrageous, but still have them make aesthetic sense. Jerwood picked 2 of these images, and I'll post scans of the finished work later. These 5 are my personal favourites. 

a

Here are details for 'a', the exhibition for which I recently made hare, squirrel and magpie plates. Worth a visit, if you're in town:

Saturday 22nd January Private View 11.00-13.00 Symposium 13.00-16.

23rd January - 27th February 12.00-15.00

The Demarco European Art Foundation, Craigcrook Castle, Craigcrook Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3PE

Ailsa Lochhead/Alice Bo-Wen Chang/Augustus Veinoglou/Becky Campbell/David Cass/Dickie Webb/Eric Schumacher/Faith Limbrick/Grazyna Dobrzelecka/Kathryn Wiggins/Kim W Wilson/Konomi Kaneya/Kirsty Sumerling/Laura Sutherland/Lorna Louise Reid/Magda Boreysza/Margaret McCormick/Nika Kupyrova/Peter Amoore/Rachael Thomas/Rachel Charter/Sacha Imrie/Sarah MacIntyre/Sara Sinclair/Sarah MacIntyre/Sigrun Gudmundsdottir/Thorunn Bara/Tobias Houlton

An extended version of the group exhibition recently presented at The WOT Gallery, with new works made in response to The Demarco European Art Foundation

Explaining Art to Animals

Here are 3 fresh new pieces I've made for an exhibition at the Richard Demarco Archive. It's a foray into fine art, which is a new thing for me.

Richard Demarco is a Scottish artist famous for his collaborations with, and championing of other artists, especially European artists, and perhaps most notably Joseph Beuys. He has an impressive archive of modern and contemporary art at Craigcrook Castle in Edinburgh.

The exhibition is called 'a' and will consist of work by 26 artists, all of us current or former Edinburgh College of Art students. (I'll post more info when I have it) The idea is that our pieces will somehow engage with the art collection.

I latched onto the image of a hare in the Beuys section. Beuys famously attempted to explain art to a dead hare (How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965); the hare being a sacred animal which runs free, unencumbered by borders.

Here's Beuys, his face smeared with gold and honey, guiding the hare around an art gallery:

So the first piece I did was the hare. For its companions, I chose two animals which I had seen in the garden surrounding the castle, a magpie and a squirrel.

Both are animals that compulsively gather things, and I thought that if any animal would appreciate the archive it would be them. So they've all been invited inside and their gazes will fall across abstract paintings and photographs of performance art. And we'll never know what they think.

A Recent Portrait Commission

This was a birthday present for the subject. I had several photos of her to work from, but I didn't want to just copy one of them. Instead, I used them for reference to get her appearance right but then made up the rest: the background, the dress, the pose - based on info I got from the client.  The size of the original is A2. Materials: Posca pen and Cretacolor's Aqua Monolith pencils. A very enjoyable experience and hopefully something I'll get to do again.

If anyone wants to order a portrait, email me: hello@magdaboreysza.com . I do animals too!

Animal Crockery

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Some fun new work that I've made. This is all vintage english and scottish china, decorated by hand with my animal designs. If you want to buy anything, get in touch: hello@magdaboreysza.com. Generally, small plates cost £25-£30 and large plates £50. The plates can be put on the wall with hooks, or used for keeping fruit or biscuits on, but not for eating off of. They are dishwasher safe.  Click on the images to see larger versions.
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We Have a Shop

... in the Spiegel Garden, a venue in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. If you're in town in August, drop by and say hello, have some tea and browse our wares. It's all handmade by us and there are both cheap and expensive things on offer. We also make things to order.

I have recently been decorating vintage tea cups and plates with my animal designs. These are painted by hand:

Joanne Richardson sells quirky, glamorous jewellery of her own design as well as vintage broches and necklaces and various accessories. Her label is called Joannarock.  

And Jenny Sweetnam makes very playful and cool jewellery as well as these great jackets, which come in various fabrics. Each jacket is unique.

We all hang out in our little shop and work on our things. You should come too.