"A quiet presence"

"Your drawings have a quiet presence; I keep having to come back to look at them again; thank you."

Fading, mixed media drawing

Detail, Fading

"I saw some work a bit like this at the Royal Academy this summer, but yours are much better, you should enter."

"Wow - amazing; I'm just going to get my friends to see this, back in a minute!"  
(On turning the corner and confronting my work for the first time).

Heart drawing #1

Just some of the lovely comments about my drawings that I received over last weekend in London at Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair 2014, Part 2.  I would like to thank everyone who came to see the work.

I did not make any sales, although I came very close with my large drawing Fading and Heart drawing #1; buying pieces of art is a major investment for people and requires time to contemplate and consider - maybe more time than a weekend affords.  I might yet hear from the interested persons. . . .

My hand made business cards went down a storm; people really loved them, selecting their favourite from the stash and very excited when I told them they could take a few.  One lovely lady carefully selected some to put in a frame.

Overall, the fair was worth doing, it was very well organised and the spaces were well lit and laid out. There was a steady stream of people throughout both days and the PV on Friday evening was well attended.  You never know who may contact you after the event with a view to purchasing something, so fingers crossed!  I am pleased with the response to my work; I have always aimed to have it stop people from just passing by and be drawn in for a closer look and I certainly achieved that.

The other exhibitors were nice: I had some lovely chats with Claire Gill, who had the space next to mine.  Claire's work, with photo montage of mostly beach scenes plays with scale, perspective, shape and pattern to create wonderfully vibrant and interesting pictures. I am sure we will stay in touch with each other.  http://www.cgeditions.co.uk/

Special thanks must go to my daughter Sarah and son Mike for their support and help throughout the weekend.  Sarah was my brilliant PA and technical support for hanging the show and Mike was courier, taking the work from the venue across London to his home when it was all over so I could spend time with his wife and baby boy, now three months old! Thank you also to Candid Arts, for inviting me to submit work for the show and for their helpful responses to my questions before I arrived in Islington. 

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New drawings and another submission

Turner-esque sunset on the river Arno

I am aware that my blogging has been somewhat sparse of late due to all sorts of things going on.  I aim to improve in future!

I had a wonderful week in Florence with Pete and eldest daughter; it was so lovely to show her all our favourite frescoes and walk round the city with her.  

View from the window of the fabulous Uffizi Museum

On two days during the week before last,  I worked with Andrew Dalton and Rob Oldfield in Richmond to take down the paintings belonging to the Green Howards Museum, where we hung them about a year ago in their temporary space while the museum was being upgraded.  We then took the paintings up the hill back to their permanent, newly and beautifully refurbished museum space.  A hot, sweaty and very satisfying couple of days work; the paintings look splendid in their new spaces.

Furniture still stacked up all round the room, but the paintings look great back up on the wall!

I have made my arrangements to get down to London for the Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair; thanks to my daughter for being a very able assistant and to son for offering to assist with driving across London over the weekend.  It was part 1 this weekend; I saw some pictures of the show on Twitter, there was an exciting breadth of work.  My turn next weekend!  I have one or two queries to ask about and sort out on Monday, then I think I am ready. I have a comprehensive list so I don't forget anything!

Meanwhile I am happy to be able to say that I have been in the studio every day this week, yes, EVERY day.  Not all of them were whole days, but I have four finished drawings to show for it and I am satisfied with progress.  

Two of the new drawings. Above: untitled so far. Below: How Many Hopes. Both mixed media, 38.5 x 38.5 cm on thick water colour paper.

I seem to have spent most of yesterday preparing a new submission.  I  finally pressed the "send" button quite late at night, and experienced a huge sense of relief.  I wrote two short statements, edited, corrected, uploaded them and then selected my three images which caused more anxst and heart searching, uploaded those, accidentally removed them, started all over again and finally got to the review button, edited one of the statements as I found a typo, AND FINALLY PRESSED "MAKE PAYMENT". Job done and now fingers crossed, but I'll just forget about it until I hear whether I have been selected or not, this will be easy to do because I am very busy at the moment.

On Monday I am going to attend a meeting in Ripon at the Workhouse Museum, to plan my part in facilitating a school party making drawings for the Big Draw later this month. I'll be travelling over with Sue Slack, so it will be a nice chance for a catch up.

For the rest of the week I will be making some more home made business cards, each with an original drawing on the back and making cakes for the upcoming meeting at Kirkbymisperton village hall on Thursday evening, where Ian R Crane will be giving people an unbiased overview of the benefits and risks of fracking.  Obviously I will be in London by then but I'm planning to make the meeting in Pickering.

Once back, I'll be dividing my time between studio and home as there are some things that need to be done in the house, post builders.  I'll be erecting my trestle table in the old studio space, now library, to use when the weather is very cold too.  My studio is bitterly cold and damp in the bad weather and this might just be the opportunity to get those prints and artists' books started.

Shop window in Florence full of jolly Pinochio figures: they are one of the symbols of the city but I don't know why!




Images Sue Gough. All rights reserved