“You never know what shapes clouds are going to be until you see them.”  

Jimi Hendrix

This Saturday, while we keep celebrating Black History Month, we are getting inspired by one of the artists we have in our collection, Tam Joseph, and his work, “Timespan”. You can see an image of it above: a long black cat leaping across the canvas, with three images hanging by string from the top of the canvas. The string used in the painting is the exact length of Tam Josephs body – he loves putting himself into his work somehow.  

Tam Joseph describes himself as “a collector of images”, as he loves to find images in things he looks at. He says images in trees, clouds and stones have been his constant companion since childhood. 

For this activity, we’ve been inspired by Tam Joseph’s creative process of seeing figures in apparently abstract shapes. For the activity, you will need to go on a small journey around your house or preferably outside. Look up to the sky at the clouds, if there are any, and look for images of things, faces, animals, bird shapes, monsters.  If there are no clouds in the sky, you can look at the formation of trees and branches and try to find pictures. You can see how the sunlight reflects on something and it becomes a shadow shape.

Looking out our window and we saw a wall with a hole in it, with a large plant growing above it. It looks like someone’s face and the bush is a large curly mop of hair. We also saw a horse shape in the clouds. We have been looking for images and collecting them for the last few days. It’s so easy to do!

Once you find an image you like, why not trying to recreate it with some found materials at home? For example, we made the horse on the clouds from cotton wool buds, glue and paper. Once you have collected some images in your head go home and try and recreate them with any materials you have.

Share your creations with us on social media #SaturdayArtClub