Hello again...from a very excited, relieved and exhausted artist! What a weekend it's been. Saturday was spent with Lon (fellow artist/falconer) on a much needed indulgent trip to Bristol for the SAA's 'It's All About Art'. We had an amazing day out, watching professional artists demonstrate their art techniques, and occasionally joining in with workshops. It was great to see these artists in action and note that they were all very different from each other! My personal favourite of the day was Vic Bearcroft who was demonstrating puppies and kittens using soft pastels on velour paper. I joined in on two of his sessions and found his technique extremely effective - of course I had to treat myself to a few sheets of the velour paper and a set of pastels so I could come home and try a few of my own pictures!! Vic Bearcroft has just won an award in the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year 2012 competition with his Pastel Painting of a Western Lowland Gorilla, 'Makaku'. Look him up, he's AMAZING and I'm now a big fan! I think the competition results are published in the new edition of the BBC Wildlife magazine which has just come out in the shops.
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| Me having a quick chat with Vic Bearcroft between his demonstrations |
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| Vic Bearcroft beginning a pastel demonstration |
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| My 2nd attempt - Gladys the kitten. I'm much happier with this one! |
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| My 1st attempt - puppy in pastel. I was a little rushed and not in a good position to see Vic demonstrate. I had a great view of the back of his head - not of his painting! At least I gave it a shot! (I'm going to sort his eyes out, he's a bit cross eyed at the moment!) |
The SAA (Society for All Artists) is also worth a look...they are a huge organisation connecting and supporting artists from all over the country and they also supply discounted art materials...google them!
So, relaxed and enthused from our day out, Lon and I had to snap back to reality again pretty quickly on Sunday morning...we had to hang our Exhibition!
In pouring rain, we loaded our cars and set off to Clevedon Pier. We had 3 hours to hang our work in the Toll House Gallery...plenty of time??? Hmmmmmm...well, lets say we managed it, just! Having to reposition our hanging wires on the majority of our frames took a long time. (Thank goodness I remembered to pack a screwdriver!!) I have to thank my lovely friend, Nicky for being there as an extra pair of eyes and hands and calming influence! After much repositioning and level-tweaking, we met our 1pm deadline and were ready for our Private View.
Wow! It was fantastic to see our art on the walls - such a buzz!! All the hard work was worth it. We had a lovely group of guests who gave us wonderful positive comments about our art.
Here's a sneaky peek - apologies for the poor picture quality, these were taken with my phone.
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| Lon Sandford's graphite drawings |
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| My paintings (painted feathers on LHS) |
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| my paintings on canvas |
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| paintings by Ann Hughes |
Our Exhibition is now open to the public and is showing for the whole of July in the Toll House Gallery, Clevedon Pier, North Somerset. If you're travelling up the M5, its 10 mins from Junction 20, (follow signs to seafront) so pop in and see us! (free entry daily. M-F, 10-5, Sat & Sun, 10-6.
Just for good measure, here's our poster one more time! Hope you can make it, bye for now,
Mandi ;)
Your Exhibition looks great, I do hope it is successful.
ReplyDeleteThanks Pam! We've had a lot of fantastic comments and feedback so far which is really encouraging! Now I have to decide which pieces to put in the Portreath Annual Exibition which is only a few weeks away now. I've been painting on feathers just recently, (which I'll be showing in the next blog post) so its odds on I'll be bringing some down with me to Portreath! I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks time, Mandi x
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