exhibition

Berkhamsted Art Exhibition (Mark II)

Wow… where did all my posts go?
The ones about those four wonderful days of pastel-society-cum-local-artists-workshops in the summer? The ones about all the portrait swap sessions I’ve held at my house, the lifedrawing days, and those St Albans Art Soc workshops that badger me reluctantly out of my comfort zone(s)?

… Oh yeah. I didn’t write them yet.

It does appear that I mostly post about local exhibitions, after being galvanised into action by the nudge of guilt and duty, usually in the form of emails from the relevant art society saying ‘please promote our exhibition(!!)’.

Speaking of which…

Please come along to Berkhamsted Art Society’s Winter exhibition at Berkhamsted Civic Centre, 101 High Street, HP4 3HD!

Entry is free, and the exhibition is open Friday 13th December 11am to 8pm, and Saturday 14th December 9am to 5pm. There is also a fashion show running from 2.30pm on Saturday.

Please note – the exhibition is only open for two days this time, so don’t miss out…

berko-poster-screencap-for-uploading-onto-my-website_fin.jpg

… anyway, these posts are all well and good – after all, my work is in these exhibitions too (see featured image ;p) – but they aren’t quite what I envisaged when starting my posts.

So, here’s a quick snapshot of me at the moment, worshipping at the altar of the retouch varnish1 in preparation for lugging work into the exhibition tomorrow…

Varnishing point

 

1

NB in the vein of retouch varnish, guidelines recommend that it is applied in a dust free environment, to avoid dirt settling on the freshly-stickified surface of one’s painting. Guidelines also recommend that varnishing is undertaken in a very well ventilated area, to avoid gassing onesself.

Anyone knowing of somewhere which is both DUST FREE and WELL VENTILATED… please do let me know…

Harpenden Arts Club Exhibition

Having scrambled (barely) to the top of my painting, framing-and-varnishing deadlines, the fruits of which are parading along the banner at the top of this page…
… except for those which have been cropped into oblivion by the ‘featured image’ aspect ratio. Let’s try that again:

My piccies banner_small sharp

Ahem, please come along to the 2019 Harpenden Arts Club Autumn exhibition from Friday to Sunday this week at Southdown Public Hall, Southdown Road, Harpenden, AL5 1PD… with further info available on the HAC website.

Exact dates and times of the exhibition are shown on this conveniently placed poster!

HAC Exhibition 2019

Aldenham Art Festival

… I’m getting better at this. A post about an exhibition before it’s more than halfway through! Moreover, a post within an hour of another post1!

So yes; come to the two remaining days of Aldenham Art Festival2. Entry is by donation to the church it is held in, open on:

  • Saturday 11am – 4pm
  • Sunday 12 noon – 4:30pm

… at St John the Baptist Church, Church Lane, Aldenham, WD25 8BE (near Radlett, Bushey and Watford).

I hear there are homemade cakes and refreshments available – an addition to what is certainly a lot of gorgeous artwork to marvel at ^_o…

1

Short timeframe of posting explains why the featured flyer has been hastily edited in Paint.net to remove an artistic thumb and reinstate some of the address.

2

Short timeframe of the exhibition explains the haste of posting.

How did it come to this…?

The question one asks as one sticks the 56th of 80 greetings cards (and its envelope) into its acetate sleeve, and realises that all the envelopes have been obscuring the card designs.

The question one asks as, juggling one heavy frame and two folders full of delicate unfixed pastels in one hand, and one ill-advised eco-friendly mug of coffee in the other, one’s trapezius threatens to part from one’s spine.

The question one asks as one totes a picture into an exhibition, weighed down physically but buoyant in spirit1, to replace a sold painting, only to find that the customer has brought it back again2, and the precious, precious sales money refunded3.

And so, I drooped off home to drown my sorrows in tea.

Fortunately, a kindly next-door neighbour salvaged my mood by dropping by to deliver some chocolate biscuits as thanks for mowing their lawn while they were away, reminding me that sometimes, pleasant surprises happen too, such as…

Finally, my cartoon featuring the Bricket Wood Art Club exhibition held in the Radlett Centre cafe (hence the inclusion of a tasty sandwich), a mere 5 months ago…

1

After spending the morning chatting to a fellow local artist and admiring their beautiful artwork.

2

This also means that, tragically, my puns of the previous post were wasted, since it was the donkey painting which had been returned.

3

I’m glad to say that Bricket Wood Art Club nonetheless let me hang my replacement picture anyway, since I was on the warm and grumpy side after lugging it in and finding I hadn’t sold anything after all. I then made an ass of myself repeating to the staff all the donkey puns I could think of. Which makes them, of course, hot cross puns.

Bricket Wood Art Club – 2019 August Exhibition

Saturday 10th to Monday 26th August

Whoops. So. This announcement is over a week late now, but at least it’s not as late as my formal announcement of Bricket Wood Art Club’s first exhibition of the year, which finished at the end of March and has as yet received but a throwaway mention in February Update (part 1).

So. Come along to the lovely summer exhibition of Bricket Wood Art Club inside Burston Garden Centre, open from 10am to 6pm1. Entry is free, and there is a restaurant/cafe inside, open until 4pm, which I can attest does a decent cup of tea2.

The address is:
Burston Garden Centre
N Orbital Road
St. Albans
Hertfordshire
AL2 2DS

… Burston Garden Centre has a bit more info on its own webpage here… ooh, and apparently the parking is free too. I tend to forget to mention this, not having a car!3

1

…despite unfortunate and wide-reaching confusion of several stewards… all right, mainly me… which resulted in several people signing up until 5pm, not realising this left the final hour of the exhibition unattended!

2

Not that I spend all my time stewarding chain-drinking cups of tea, you understand.

3

I should probably also mention, not that I’m bragging or anything, that the Hee-Hawe-some painting of a Wonky Donkey at the top of the page was in the exhibition, but has now sold… which I’m very glad of, since it was a Bray-ve Attempt which took Donkey’s Ears to paint… OK, I’m done now.

St Albans Art Society – 2019 Summer Exhibition!

… AKA Mounting problems…

To be fair, the problems this year can mostly be ascribed to Acts of God, and have also mostly been inflicted on other people (a fellow SAAS committee member comes to mind, as does the person I go to for frames who, having received my order, promptly went into hospital with a collapsed lung1.)

However, this does mean that I spent this evening eyeing my newly-framed artwork, with its rather stark white mount glowing against the dingy backdrop of my pastel pictures, thinking….

Hm. Sure wish I’d had time to tint that mount.

In fact, given I’d finished all the artwork going in for this exhibition by the end of May2, it’s amazing how much time drained into the black hole of my life before I actually started getting the framing done. I’m sure there have been psychological studies done on this phenomenon. So sure, in fact, that I decided the best use of my time now would be to create a beautiful pie chart3 about the overheads on producing a piece of artwork4.

Having now tentatively signed up to Instagram as well @TraceysDrawings (#shamelessplug), I fear this overhead will only increase. I’m sure there’s something to be said about working more efficiently but, having spent the last two hours5 waffling on about nothing to do with St Albans Art Society, I shall now finally reiterate/return/wander back to the actual subject of my post, which is:

Come to St Albans Art Society Summer Exhibition!

  • Come to St Albans Art Society Summer Exhibition!
    • Entry is free
    • Open to the public daily from Wednesday 31st July to Saturday 3rd August
    • Time: 10am to 6pm
    • At Upper Dagnall Street Baptist Church Hall, St Albans, AL3 5EE

Further details6, together with a sneak-peak gallery of a few of our exhibits (including mine), are on the St Albans Art Society website.

1

…and still somehow managed to finish the frames. I can happily report they are now up and about again… and their efforts are very much appreciated *bows*.

2

The same cannot be said for the artwork going into the pending Bricket Wood Art Club exhibition at Burston Garden Centre in St Albans, which is due in less than two weeks, for which only four out of five paintings are finished, and for which I as yet have no frames… this is sure to end well.

3

Pie chart as beautiful (and accurate) as fifteen minutes of work could render it.

4

… case in point. NB the so-called ‘Daily Painting’ Challenge was a satisfying exception – but as a result, I now have a backlog of 20-odd paintings to properly process, fix, file and upload to various locations … on top of my previous backlog.

5

Yup, this took two hours. It was adding in the emojis to the pie chart that did it. The explanation for that black-hole effect is becoming clearer…

6

Well… in all honesty, the same details, repeated again.

Berkhamsted Art Exhibition

Just a quick post to plug the local Berkhamsted Art Society Exhibition1, which is running until 5pm this Saturday (18th May2). It is a beautiful exhibition of local artists held in Berkhamsted Civic Centre, open daily from 9am to 5pm.

I was very surprised during my stewarding slot to discover how few visitors the exhibition was getting – considering the attractive venue, the location bang in the centre of Berkhamsted (barely ten minutes walk3 from the nearest railway station), the free tea, coffee and biscuits on offer, and of course the quality of the artwork on display4.

So – do please come and have a look if you’re in the area over the next few days!

190516 Berkhamsted Map

1
Or, as I have affectionately heard it phrased, Berko.

2
And not in fact the 8th of May, which was the date I so cunningly wrote on some blameless visitor’s receipt today…

3
Or – as I discovered dashing for the train home – 4.5 minutes flat-out running with a heavy backpack.

4
Not just mine ;p.

February update (part 1)

All right, yes, it’s March. But only just!1

To prove I’d not only learned nothing from my previous mass-framing escapades, but also had the capacity for new and exciting blunders, this month I had to co-ordinate (within a four-day period):

1)    Picking up unsold work from the Pastel Society2 in London.
2)    Ordering the frame for, picking up, framing, and safely posting a commission *bites nails*3.
3)    Ordering (from a separate place) a frame and mount – and then framing and delivering – two pictures to a local art exhibition courtesy of Bricket Wood Art Club.
4)    Attending an all-day workshop of St Albans Art Society’s by Keith Hornblower… more on this later. It was brilliant, but the workshop – and evening visitors – meant I clearly wasn’t going to get any of #1 to #3 done this day.

So. First issue. There wasn’t a lot of time left before I needed to post #2 (the commission), since it was a birthday present. In fact there was so little time I ultimately had to manage both #1 (collect pastelsoc work) and #2 (collect commission frame) on the same day. Logic dictated that I:

    • Zip to London in the morning to pick up the pastel soc work4.
    • Dump the pastel soc work at home.
    • Zip out again and collect the commission frame before the shop (Artscape in Harpenden) shut for the day at 5:30pm.

A good plan? Why yes. Except I overslept and had no time for step 2. My arms were pretty tired by the end of that day. And of course, due to the cunning location of Artscape (which keeps getting shifted further away from the Town Centre)…

Comic v2 FIN

…it made my arms feel even tireder.

To add insult to injury, I then had to run5 for the train on the way home (with three frames in my folder). Fortunately the running was all downhill. Less fortunately it was muddy. More fortunately again, I did not end up tobogganing downhill on the frames.

Second issue. Yet again, I did not factor in enough slippage time when ordering the frames for #3 (the local art exhibition). There was just over a week of delay after the estimated finishing date – not a huge amount, and hardly unprecedented – but it left me just two days to collect and frame the things. Also it so happened that the one day the frames were available for collection, I was on #4 (the workshop), forcing me to lean heavily on my long-suffering partner to drag the frames home for me (and the groceries. After all, if he’s going to the market anyway he may as well pick up the weekly veg).

However!

This time I did get all the frames and mounts the right size. So maybe I have learned something after all…

1 NB lest you think this post’s image is just a random tree, it is in fact the tree outside the Harpenden Public Halls, through which I walk to reach the awesome shop Artscape (see later whinging within this post). Well… at least there is a connection, however tenuous…

2 If it sounds like I’m name-dropping The Pastel Society into my blog at every opportunity; why yes, yes I am. Look – they even paraphrased me in one of their blog posts: https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/about-us/blog/emerging-artists-pastel-society-exhibition-2019

3 It arrived safely! I was a tad nervous posting it, and therefore smothered the commission in several hundred layers of (probably not strictly necessary) cardboard and bubble wrap. But well, there is no kill like overkill…

4 While concurrently obtaining a bribe of posh tea for my partner in return for him picking up all my other frames on Saturday, when I was away due to #4 (the workshop).

5 All right. More like ‘waddle swiftly’.

Pastel Society Open Exhibition 2019

Woohooo! After many years of trying1, a couple of my pictures have finally snuck past submission and into the Mall Galleries Pastel Society Open Exhibition (2019).

As you can see, after receiving this exciting news I comported myself with great dignity.

With only a smidgeon of ulterior motive2, I would definitely recommend going to see this awesome exhibition, held in Mall Galleries in central London…

  • Exhibition opens: Tuesday 5 February, 10am to 5pm
  • Exhibition closes: Saturday 16 February, 3pm

(And of course further details are given on the Mall Galleries website here).

line1

1As the diagram below illustrates, it is in fact not that many years, but it certainly *feels* long – aside from that one year I got the deadline wrong and missed it entirely…

pastelsoc entry timeline v3

2I wonder how many people I can now spam with invitations…?

Harpenden Arts Club Exhibition

Well, I was midway through drafting a post on a very interesting gouache resist workshop (I’m still working on it… only three weeks late so far), but instead of I will say…

… YIPPEE ~^^~!

One of the pictures I entered into the Harpenden Arts Club exhibition won the most popular vote-from-the-general-public. It was another Cedar-the-eagle-owl pastel (I honestly do draw things other than owls occasionally), and since I thought the standard of work in the exhibition was very good, I was most flattered ^^.

Also to my great joy I managed to sell two of the three works that I entered, which is a relief to the walls of my house against which all the leftovers are stacking up. It was probably even more a relief to the kind friends who first visited the exhibition and then lugged my single remaining (but enormous) picture home in their car1.

Anyway, since I completely failed to take any photos of my pictures after I got them framed, I have pasted a lovely eframe mockup at the top of this post instead which is why all the images have little close symbols in the top left corner. NB mockup may be less lovely than claimed.

1 I should also take this moment to thank the fellow artists and artist-affiliates who helped me transport all my pictures to the exhibition in the face of extremely heavy traffic, and even heavier queues @___@.