September was a busy month on the art scene. Open studios meant it was time to put some artwork that had been languishing without mounts or frames into something that visitors could see effectively and perhaps even purchase, so out came the mount cutter and several furious sessions of measuring, cutting and wrapping in cellophane. I managed to produce to make up a browser’s worth of pictures covering several styles of work done over the past few years. Then on to the paintings that I had produced over the last 2 years that were on board and needed trimming down. I tend to use ply boards that are larger than the painting I am working on and then I mask out with tape to the actual size of work I want to use. This means that there is always some trimming to do, to either fit to a frame, or to prepare for an idea I had for displaying in the studio. I cut 40mm wide white mount card strips and mitred them to form a border all the way round so that they could be displayed in my larger homemade browser. This saved me tons of cash by not having to pay for framing and was just as effective in showing off the paintings without having to hang them – result!!!!
Now for the bad news – only 19 people came to the studio over the 2 weekends and the 2 Friday afternoons. Of that total there were 12 who were acquaintances, friends and neighbours – so that left 7 actual public visitors to whom I am exceedingly grateful that they took the time to pay me a visit. Where did everyone go? I can’t believe that these few people in whole of St Albans and district were the only ones interested in seeing paintings – or perhaps landscape painting has severely fallen out of favour?
One event apart from this sad tale of wow that was encouraging, was I had a winning bid of £500 for the St Albans painting I did for Sally’s charity Home-Start. It went to a friend who wanted an image of St Albans for their home in Yorkshire as a reminder of time spent here. What amazed me more was that it was bid for without seeing the actual painting and chosen from an image we put on Facebook. The power of social media!!
Turning to a happier event – I completed another great session with Mark Spray at the Newlyn School of Art during the first week of September. What an inspiring week!
This was really a re-run of the course I did in April which was done in freezing and rainy conditions and this time it could not be more different this time as there was bright sunlight days and lovely beaches and moors to get down as paintings and sketches. I have come back with plenty of material that will become the genesis of much work to come. Here are 2 acrylic ink paintings – one of Newlyn harbour at night and another of the coastline at Marizion.
I am currently working up some abstract images captured from an exercise we did on the course – making a series of images drawn onto a grid of squares based on a view across Newlyn town. They are simply compressed suggestions of an elevated view across the town which have been transformed into segments of a drawn grid of 40mm squares. When they are enlarged into a painting size they can produce individual pictures that stand on their own or work equally well when grouped together in small selections. I am sending a group of 3 of them to the open exhibition run by the Royal Society of Oil Painters, so fingers crossed that they get selected.
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