The Leafcutter Bee by Val Littlewood

Bees in Art welcomes bee painter Val Littlewood.

Val Littlewood has recently completed a successful exhibition of bee paintings at the Lost Garden of Heligan, Cornwall.

Val Littlewood has been an artist, illustrator, designer and lecturer for many years. Currently her exhibition “Buzz, A Celebration of British Bees” is touring the UK.

While always interested in natural history subjects, the bee paintings came about more by accident than design:

“ Two years ago while doing some gardening for my father I found our old beehives, tucked away and no longer in use. Such memories flooded in about the delightful bees and their honey that I decided to paint a honey bee for my Pencil and Leaf blog. From came a commission from a bee enthusiast to paint a set of 16 bees. While researching and studying bees it was impossible not to become very fond of these delightful and hardworking little creatures. They are fine natural architects, ingenious nest builders, solicitous mothers and cooperative workers. Their stories are fascinating yet they generally pursue their crucial work of pollinating our crops and garden flowers unseen and unappreciated. To help raise awareness of bees and the need to protect them and their habitats I decided to paint 25 of our British wild bees for a small exhibition “Buzz, A celebration of British Bees” The aim of Buzz is to help people understand more about these wonderful friends of ours and appreciate their very distinct personalities. Bees need us and we need bees!

Val Littlewood

Art for the Love of Sark: Taking place in the Channel Islands, UK

Bees in Art artists Bruce Pearson and Anna Kirk Smith are taking part in an Artists for Nature project: Art for the love of Sark. The project named 'Art for the Love of Sark' will involve the artists recording all aspects of island life from its rich and unspoilt natural history to the human aspect. The artists will come from all parts of the world, from Russia and the USA to Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, and among them the award-winning President of the Society of Wildlife Artists, Harriet Mead. A full list of the participating artists can be seen at The Land Gallery News Page.

Bee Prints @ Bees in Art

Bee Paintings @ Bees in Art

‘Cupid complains to Venus’ by Lucas Cranach the Elder, oil on board

Lucas Cranach The Elder's painted 'Cupid Complaining to Venus' around 1526. Cupid is depicted stealing honey from a bees nest in a tree, being stung by the irate bees and complaining to his mother Venus, the goddess of love, who stands exquisitely by and chastises Cupid: 'There's never sweetness without pain'.

A honeybee will sting an intruder if it perceives a threat, this is a defensive mechansim. Once the bee has stung the intruder an alarm pheronome is released and alerts other bees from the hive. They may also sting. A bee's sting is a modified ovipositor and during the act of stinging, bee venom is injected into the intruder through the sting. In humans this results in pain and itching, and motivates the intruder to flee the vicinity. The bees have then successfully defended their home.

Robbing wild honeybees of their honey, as Cupid does here, would almost certainly result in angry bees and stinging. Sometimes death may also result from a bee sting, this is called anaphylactic reaction or shock. Honeybees often target the eyes of their disturber, apparently attracted by their movement. A sting in the eye is intensely painful (as the author can testify) and any attack of the eyes causes panic. In such a situation Cupid would see the disturbed bees fly towards him and here them buzzing angrily. He would experience immediate pain as the bees stung his flesh. The ensuing pain, panic and threat to his vulnerable parts, would cause Cupid to desire to flee. Later Cupid's stings would redden, swell, remain painful, and become itchy: along with Venus' chastisement, a lasting reminder of his theft.

Click here to read the complete article.

The Strange Effect of Light by Mark Rowney

Mark Rowney’s painting The Strange Effect of Light can now be seen at The Biscuit Factory in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK.

The Strange Effect of Light (detail) by Mark Rowney

The Strange Effect of Light

There are moments when one’s eyes become adjusted to the light that we see much more than first appear. 'The strange effect of light' represents such a moment.The beautiful creatures that dance around us at night are always there but only seen when our own light attracts them.

The original painting 'The Strange Effect of Light'' was painted in acrylics on birchwood panel.

"My influences are the bees that sting me, the midges that bite me and the birds that sing so sweetly. I was born in 1962. With a stick and a pair of wellies I fought many battles in the hayfields and moors of Northern England.

I grew up somewhat whilst being educated at St Martins School of Art in London, after which I was lucky enough to work for many of my favourite publishers, doing art work for Penguin Books, the Radio Times, Homes and Gardens and various BBC publications.

I moved to New York and lived in very small apartments, producing work for the New York Times, Time Magazine and Travel and Leisure. While in America I became interested in leather work and started producing products for the fashion designer Paul Smith on 5th avenue. A fantastic way to meet models.

Life moved on and so did I. Several months spent in an Indian factory designing embroidered soft furnishings. What a beautiful and horrible place.

For many years now I have been living back in the lovely Durham dales where I pursue my love for nature in contemporary art, occasionally I dust off my wellies and sharpen my stick." Mark Rowney

The Bee on the Comb or Untitled

Christopher 'Kit' Williams (born April 28, 1946 in Kent, England) is an English artist, illustrator and author best known for his book Masquerade, a pictorial storybook which contains clues to the location of a golden (18 carat) jewelled hare created by Williams and then buried "somewhere in Britain."
Williams wrote another puzzle book with a bee theme; the puzzle was to figure out the title of the book and represent it without using the written word. This competition ran for just a year and a day and the winner was revealed on the live BBC TV chatshow Wogan.

In 1985, Kit Williams designed the Wishing Fish Clock, a centrepiece of the Regent Arcade shopping centre in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Over 45 feet tall, the clock features a duck that lays a never-ending stream of golden eggs and includes a family of mice that are continually trying to evade a snake sitting on top of the clock. Hanging from the base of the clock is a large wooden fish that blows bubbles every half hour. Catching one of these bubbles entitles you to make a wish, hence the name of the clock.

Other clocks designed by Williams can be found in Telford Shopping Centre and in the Midsummer Place section of Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre.

Williams was also involved in the design of the Dragonfly Maze in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England, which comprises a yew maze with a pavilion at the centre. The object is not only to reach the pavilion, but to gather clues as one navigates the maze. Correctly interpreting these clues when one reaches the pavilion allows access to the maze's final secret.

In August 2009, Kit Williams was reunited with the golden hare which he had not seen for more than 30 years.[1] He is quoted as saying:

"I had not remembered it being as delicate as it is ... Then when I picked it up the little bells jingled, and it sparkled in a way that I had forgotten as well."

This reuniting was revealed in a BBC Four sixty minute documentary on William's work, The Man Behind The Masquerade on December 2 2009, beginning with Masquerade and ending with an exhibition of the best 18 pieces of his art from the last thirty years at London's Portal Gallery, which had first exhibited his work in the 1970s. The programme showed Williams being reunited with the golden hare for the first time when it was loaned by its anonymous present owner in the Far East.[2]

From Wikipedia: Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Fairy Fights Bumblebee by Arthur Rackham

Following an early false start as a clerk, Rackham went on to be one of the best known and loved book illustrators of late Victorian and early 20th Century Britain. Rackham's Victorian sensibility and consummate draughtsmanship produced illustrations of near hallucinatory scenes, which were full of danger yet never dangerous and imbued with childlike wonder.

In 1907 Rackham illustrated the dreamlike Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll, and fittingly went on in 1908 to illustrate Shakespeare's: A Midsummer-Night's Dream. Widely regarded as one of Rackham's masterpieces, A Midsummer-Night's Dream features 40 coloured plates, including our fairy and bumblebee battle. Populated by Shakespeare's protagonists and other fairies and weird peoples, A Midsummer-Night's Dream proved to be an ideal vehicle for Rackham's art and is now a much sought after book.

Bombus subterraneous mezzotint engraving by Andrew Tyzack donated to RCA Secret 2010 and now revealed. Two other mezzotints were donated by Andrew and can be seen at the following links: RCA Secret Drone and RCA Secret Worker.

Please click the above link to view this film of William Neill painting bumblebees on the BBC

Artist William Neill loves painting bees, and as such he must scrutinise his subject. These close encounters have made him more fascinated than ever by these incredible insects. The wildflower meadows, or machair, of the Outer Hebrides where Neil paints are a rare haven for bees and a reminder of what much of Britain looked like before intensive farming drained the landscape of its wildflower colour.