About the Art
At the Royal Academy Schools Vanessa Bell was taught by and admired the work of John Singer Sargent. She was also greatly influenced by Whistler, and in the final pages of this letter to her friend Margery Snowdon she described the influence of his technique on her painting style.
Bell’s first commissioned work was a portrait of Lady Robert Cecil. This was also the first work she ever exhibited, at the New Gallery, London, in 1905.
After her marriage in 1907, Bell continued to paint portraits, but with the birth of her son Julian in 1908, her paintings adopted more domestic themes such as still lifes and interiors
Bell was the elder sister of writer Virginia Woolf. She was married to the art critic Clive Bell, with whom she had an open marriage, and had intimate relationships with the artist Duncan Grant and the critic and artist Roger Fry. In 1910, Fry organised the first Post-Impressionism exhibition in London. This made a strong, if brief, impact on Bell’s artistic development, and marked a milestone in the history of British taste.
In 1906, when Bell started to think of herself as an artist, she formed the Friday Club in order to create a place in London that was more favourable to painting. Vanessa was encouraged by the Post-Impressionist exhibitions organised by Roger Fry and she copied their bright colours and bold forms in her artworks. In 1914, she turned to abstraction.
Bell rejected the examples of Victorian narrative painting and rejected a discourse on the ideal and aberrant qualities of femininity. Some of Vanessa Bell’s works were related to her personal life.
Bell is one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury group. She exhibited in London and Paris during her lifetime, and has been praised for innovative works during her early maturity and for her contributions to design.
Charleston House, Firle, Sussex, where she and Grant lived, is perhaps her best known work. Bell and Grant decorated the interior of the farmhouse in the bold signature style of the Omega Workshops, a design group founded by Fry in 1913.
***Beads strung on a chain, by themselves and beads simply added to wire or cord will not be accepted.***
Please add the tag or title SEP ABS to your photos. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog, if you have one.
ENTRIES for ART BEAD ARTISTS!!
• Please post at least one single shot of your creation on the Pinterest Board. This will be used to make a collage for the Monthly Challenge Gallery. Every creation will be added to the collage, regardless of a blog post. So everyone gets included!
Your entry must be on Pinterest 2 days BEFORE the recap to be included.
• Be sure to share with us the name of the art bead artist in the description of your photo so that if you are selected for the weekly Perfect Pairings on Wednesdays, both you as the designer and the art bead artist can get the credit you both deserve!
• An InLinkz button will be added to the bottom of the Monthly Challenge Recap post. Here you will be able to link up your blog post if you have one. It is no longer necessary to add your blog post URL to the description unless you want to. Be sure to hop around and see all the great inspiration and leave some comment love!
• The Monthly Challenge Recap with Blog Tour will be posted on September 31st.
• One prize winner will be selected at random from all pictures posted on the Pinterest board.
• One prize winner will be selected at random from all blog posts added to the hop for the Monthly Challenge Recap post. So if you want to be in the pool for the second prize, be sure to use the InLinkz code at the bottom of the post to share your process and inspirations!
• Winners will be randomly chosen from all the qualifying entries on July 1st.
• Formerly the Featured Designer of the Week, our new Perfect Pairings will focus on both the jewelry designer and the art bead artist.
• From all the entries during the month, an editor will pick their favorite design to be featured every Wednesday here on ABS, so get those entries in soon.
An art bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an independent artist. Art beads are the vision and handiwork of an individual artist. You can read more about art beads here.
***A bead that is handmade is not necessarily an art bead. Hill Tribe Silver, Kazuri ceramic beads or lampwork beads made in factories are examples of handmade beads that are not considered art beads.
Beaded beads, stamped metal pendants or wire-wrapped components are not considered art beads for our challenge.***
