www.ruthrosengarten.com




Drawing and photography are central to my practice. Both make pressing - if sometimes fictitious - claims to the capture of lost moments.




29/01/2011

Hot from Lisbon

From my sweet and thoughtful sister in law, who attended the opening of the exhibition of sketchbooks in Portugal today (thank you Carole!)... these photographs:






Chilling, I think they call it.

Still scanning sketchbooks from South Africa. The scanning of double page spreads of this square sketchbook involves scanning each page separately and then seaming them together on Photoshop - takes rather longer than the zippy face-down-scan-and-blog approach you can take with Moleskines or A4 spiral-bound pads that fit perfectly onto the scanner!


Brush markers (and in the last spread, a touch of watercolour) in Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook. 




Dogs on the beach


Brush markers and watercolour in Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook.




27/01/2011

Catalogue online!

The catalogue for the exhibition of sketchbooks that opens on Saturday in Almada, near Lisbon, is now available to view online here.



Landscape: Kommetjie

At this rate it will take me a month to scan in the sketchbook drawings I made in South Africa, but never mind!
Brush markers and watercolour in Windsor and Newton spiral bound pad.



26/01/2011

Christmas band

It was wonderful arriving in Kommetjie, near Cape Town, on Christmas day, and being welcomed by a street band. Fabulous bands performing in the streets on Christmas day constitute a traditional custom for the so-called Cape coloureds, descendents of Malay and other slave labourers imported into the Cape by Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century. Afrikaans speaking, they are a significant, if not predominant, population group in the Western Cape today. I included a photograph of the beautiful girls marching ahead of the band under the Maverick photograph here.
Brush markers and pencil crayon in Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook.

Brush markers in Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook.
Brush markers and collaged envelope in Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook.




24/01/2011

Back home and South Africa, 25 December 2010

Back home after a long time away, and flailing in stuff that needs to be done, so the scanning of my sketchbook will be slow.  These lemons from an exercise with my brother upon my arrival: I think his may have been his first drawing ever.


Pencil and brush marker in Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook