Well this is another blog post about another blog post AGAIN! Don’t worry, this won’t be a habit. It’s just so lovely when other people write positive things about your work. Ruth Millington wrote about 2 series of cyanotypes that I have available to buy with SUPAgallery in her blog series on ‘art for sale: artists in focus’. ‘Under the Sun’ is a series of work which celebrates the beauty and fragility of wild flower meadows which are in rapid decline in the UK. ‘The Naturalists’ is a series of cyanotypes that celebrate women who are at the forefront of promoting the environmental revolution by working with conservation projects preserving flora and fauna.

Fields of Blue and Gold can be read here

Keepsake

The metal gold leaf is applied to the cyanotype once it has dried. It’s quite a fiddly process but I love the result. I used it in these images about meadows to emphasise how precious meadowland is in the UK now. There are quite a few articles about the loss of meadows as we are becoming more aware of the environmental impact man and his habits are having on the earth.

www.magnificentmeadows.org.uk is a good place to start to understand the reasons that they have declined and the importance of trying to restore them.

I am really lucky to live near a small historic meadow which is still managed using old equipment such as scythes. It is a pleasure to walk through at any time of year, but especially so in the summer when the wild flowers are abundant.

This blog post is about another blog post! The lovely Karen Parker of Intersilient wrote about my solo exhibition called Shadows of the Sun which opened at the end of February at The Coach House Gallery in Winterbourne Gardens, Part of the University of Birmingham. It had to close early because of covid-19 but luckily Karen went before it closed so that you can read all about it here:

Shadows of the Sun by Anne Guest

or if you prefer you can look at this cyanotype image that was part of the exhibition instead. (Please do both)

Little Solace (cyanotype on paper)

Although I have been making cyanotype images for a couple of years now, this is the first time I have had an exhibition comprising only cyanotype images. It was a great way of pushing myself to make new work and explore the medium further. And I loved the experience.

I appreciate some of you may not know what the cyanotype process is or what it involves but fear not – I will give you a brief description now and will do a more detailed blog post (with pictures!) soon.

The cyanotype is a camera less photographic print where light sensitive chemicals are applied to a surface (usually paper but can be fabric, wood, glass) and allowed to dry before placing objects or a negative image on the surface and exposing to ultraviolet light (the sun) for several minutes upwards. They are also known as blueprints because of their colour.