Artist Sally Stanley has designed our new Christmas card. Order yours here. These are her words about being moved to support Ethiopia through her art…
On a visit to Redland Fair a few years ago I came across a colourful stall run by a woman dressed in full Ethiopian costume. She looked familiar and then I realised it was Dr Sue Thomas who I had worked with at Bradgate Surgery when she was a GP and I was a health visitor. I was intrigued to discover that she was raising awareness for a new charity called for-Ethiopia.
My personal interest in Ethiopia had started in 1972 when I was travelling back to UK having worked as Sister Sally In the Zambia Flying Doctor Service. I was travelling alone and joined a very small group of tourists in Addis Ababa for a guided tour lasting 10 days. We were to have some day trips and then fly to several remote locations to visit the most famous sites. I was completely awestruck by the landscape, the rock churches created by early Christians and remote palaces built for the royal family.
I especially remember the huge eyes that stared at me from between the highly coloured friezes that ran across walls and ceilings. The Coptic Orthodox paintings and artefacts were quite different to any other art I had come across in other parts of Africa.
One of my travelling companions was a woman doctor and we requested to see some basic village clinics which had little to offer their patients. We were also able to ask about village life and discovered how hard it was for the women and even young girls. Working in Africa had been a life-changing experience for me. I deve
loped an interest in 3rd World health and a wish to work in public health in UK. In 1975 I qualified as a health visitor in Bristol where I continued to work and also met my husband Dr Derek Stanley.
Through-out my nursing career I had maintained an interest in art and tried to keep it up whenever I could. Eventually, I became a mature student at UWE where I gained a BA in Drawing and Applied Art and MA in Multi-disciplinary Printmaking at UWE. This opened up unexpected doors in my life……. including me designing some cards for for–Ethiopia leading on from that meeting with Sue at Redland Green Fair!
This year Sue and Dudley were very definite that they wanted a really zingy, vibrant card, and Tigist had suggested an Ethiopian angel to me a while ago. So this is what I set out to do looking at my old slides of Ethiopia, the internet and books. I experimented with colour schemes, angel wing designs, and the all important striking faces. Having shown Sue a collection of ideas she had no doubt about the one she liked best!
The process of mixing vermillion, deep yellow, yellow ochre and burnt umber was very absorbing. As the gorgeous colours sang together it made me feel profoundly happy. I hope they have the same effect on you.
http://www.sallystanley.co.uk/
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