Thursday 12 June 2014

A New Place


ON THE ROAD OF MY NAME, a motley band of travelling misfits vagabond their way to Another Place...
And thus you enter my new website! I have kept a rather dusty web-place for some years now, which although pleasingly rooty and interesting, was not at all easy to update and lost in the grand job that internet housekeeping has become, it has not been tidied for years! So I decided to take action, and build myself a new one - this time, super-simple, no faffery or frippery, just a good online portfolio collection of all my creations, where I can easily slot in new works as they are created. This website should work smoothly on all the varying whatsits that people might choose to use to look through the veil, and be a good window to all that I do. It will grow over time, but for now, please go and visit it, pass on the link to your friends and let me know what you think of it! 


In fact, there's a whole basket of new things to tell you about - the website being the first. I'm also beginning a little newsletter - a ether-pamphlet of sorts in which I will send you occasional tidings of news and happenings. This blog will remain the place for long tales, unfolding paintings and rambles on the moor, but should you wish to be kept informed of exhibitions, events and other such ephemera, please sign up here:






Those of you who have stepped into my etsy shop lately will know that there are many wonderful new things in there. Not least, a selection of fantastic prints on delicious heavyweight (320gsm) cream-straw recycled card. 


I've wanted for a long time to get away from the glaring white background, and have finally managed to do it, with these tactile and lovely prints, which have a feathery hint of inclusions in the paper, giving each one an earthy feel. 


On the reverse of each print are details about the painting. 


There are prints large and small, and a slightly smaller selection of works than before. As part of the spring clean of my online work I have decided to stop selling my much older illustrations, which I feel I have artistically outgrown.


You will, however, notice a few new ones which you'll not have seen before!


So perhaps I'll tell you their tales...


This one I painted last month to take to the Weird & Wonderful Wood Fayre. A green-and-anchor-clad woman crouches in her small boat, setting sail towards I-know-not-what, propelled by paddle & sail, and led by a strange figurehead. 


The image is painted on an old wooden paddle that I found in a junk shop some years back, but I am not entirely sure what it was - a butter pat? a tiny oar? Any thoughts welcome! This original painting is for sale here if you love it. Or you can buy a print!

By Paddle & Sail ~ oils on wood ~ © Rima Staines 2014

From venturing to homing, the other new painting you'll find in my shop is in fact not very newly painted. It was made in 2011 for my brother Jan and his wife Maria's 2nd anniversary at Jan's request - a humourous pondering of what Maria (a frequenter of jumble and car boot sales and a collector of many beautiful old items) might be like one far-off day when she's living alone without Jan to maintain the house (as he does brilliantly) and only her hoarded and squirreled artifacts to hold up the crumbling dwelling! 


I had great fun detailing many little items and stuffing them into the cottagey corners of this chunky piece of Yew, which had a convenient branch-sprout for the range's chimney.


As always, I drew the image in first, particularly important with something as finnickety and detailed as this one.


This old woman ended up with a Turkish kilim-carpet and boots and shawl-decoration inspired by the Tales of the Amur -  Gennady Pavlishin's beautifully illustrated depiction of the stories and beliefs of the Nanais people of far Eastern Siberia on the great Amur river.


There are old bottles, tilley lamps, top hats, broken perambulators, parasols, books, cameras, clocks, trunks, typewriters, wheels, wool (even holding the window together - knitting needles between the panes, and knitted curtains too); there are tin baths, rolling pins, jars, spoons, fiddles, cups, clogs, spools, tongs, teapots, pepper mills, chamber pots, bellows, baskets... all holding together this home, in which the old woman sits serenely drinking tea.


And there we have it - a little view into the nest of a happy crone, whose journeys (perhaps by paddle or sail or foot or wheel or wind-horse) have brought her to this place, cocooned by all these mementos of those adventures, and the age-old wisdom there is to be found in a pot of tea.

Brickabracks & Mortar ~ oils on wood ~ © Rima Staines 2014
prints available here


15 comments:

Sarah said...

Wonderful new website and wonderful new prints! I'm loving the new paper you are using - the quality is just lovely and is a good match for your artwork!

Charlotte said...

It is a lovely little snug emporium of delights. I am saving for a print

Aoife.Troxel said...

Congratulations on the new website! I have signed up for the newsletter-type thing as well.

I did a small bit of googling about the paddle. Do you think it might be a small peel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_(tool)

suzi.crockford said...

Beautiful. Well done. xx

Susannah said...

Beautiful and enchanting as always! My next purchase will be a print of Brickabracks & Mortar...

Heather said...

Great new website and the new paper is so much nicer than plain white. I do love the old woman with all her bits and pieces around her. I shall end up like that - in fact I might be there already!

Jess said...

You're so clever building your own website! It's so beautifully simple and easy to navigate. The white background is different to your usual style (?) but it shows off the artwork perfectly. I love your new work.
Jess xx

Ms. said...

Ah most beautiful and prolific one, yet another version of your stunning visions! Lovely lovely lovely. I have a new computer and a new right eye lens...both thanks to the generosity of many friends, and both contributing to my own vision, which was failing at both the actual and virtual platforms. We move and change with the flow. Miracles happen every second somewhere. I am pleased and grateful to still be a part of your flow.
Much love to you and yours.
Michelle in New York City

Velma Bolyard said...

oh, WELL done!

sarah said...

Such a richness of marvellous art!

Reifyn said...

I've never seen most of these images. I really like the first one, especially the bird-like thing with wheels and the wheeled shell contraption with oars and a tree—I've been looking for something unique to get about it for months now (and haven't yet found a Baba Yaga style hut-on-folws-legs) and imagine these two as convenient means of conveyance.
I wonder if you know or know of a Welsh artist called Margaret Jones? I think you'd like her earliest work in particular.

Crystaldreamweddings said...

Your new website is brilliant Rima, truly lovely. I hadn't noticed the ball of wool in the window frame on mine, but I do like the idea of every time I look at that print I will see something new to catch my eye. Such detailed work.

Valerianna said...

The web site looks wonderful, Rima! And I chuckled at "Brickabracks & Mortar", hehe, though I don't quite qualify as an old woman yet as I just crossed into fiftyhood, I DO relate to the jumble of collected things and the little house that looks a bit like my own. I have a similar Turkish kilim and a pair of socks very like the ones she wears. I look forward to sipping tea in my jumble when I qualify as an old woman and hope by then I have a pair of Nanais boots myself!

Unknown said...

Those are all fantastic. Thanks for really maximizing the web space, enough to put a little more highlight in those works, which are rarely made these days with their adherence to a sort of medieval aesthetic. They look brilliant. I'll surely check out your new site for more updates on your creative development and work.

Michelle Pittman @ Maverick Web Marketing

The Flying Tortoise said...

Just beautiful Rima...
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