Friday 9th October (Copy)
On Saturday, we took my 5 paintings to Tallantyre Gallery in Morpeth. They were all framed in beautiful Buckinghams frames. They showed me my paintings hanging on their walls and apologised for the lack of sales but couldn’t explain it. They were very happy with the new ones and particularly liked the large Croft painting with red fields. They were going to put it in the window immediately. They asked if I had any smaller, similar paintings (which I have) which they could take to their next Art Fair in January. I might even do a few more in the same style and colour scheme. I had a good chat with Jackie the manager and Martin the owner about the state of commercial art in general. It is always good to get another perspective on things. I was very pleased with the visit. They are always very complimentary about my work. Hopefully some will sell.
It’s been full steam ahead in my studio this week. I cracked on with the Woodland paintings for Buckinghams. It’s a slow and initially daunting task with 6 white boards to stare at and I tackled it in my usual way of having several on the go at the same time, gradually adding layers of colour then detail to each one. It lets the different layers dry (even though I’m using acrylics) and takes some of the tedium out of the painting process. I now have 4 16”x16” and 2 24”x24” Autumn Woodland paintings completed. I am never really happy with these paintings as I said last week but when varnished and framed(by Buckinghams) they will look good.
This week the C word (Christmas) reared its ugly head and I decided I needed to get my Christmas cards sorted. I know it seems early but it’s one more thing to tick off my “to do” list and will give me peace of mind to get them sorted early. I am having one of my newly discovered acrylic ink paintings printed by my usual card printing company Redcliffe Images. I haven’t got time at the moment to hand paint 80 Christmas cards! The cards I had printed for AITG sold very well. Natasha had requested that I keep one particular painting back for her so I was able to re-photograph it for the card.
I sold another painting at Beckstones Gallery in The Lakes last week and satisfyingly it was one they’d had for quite a while.
I had a cracking month in September at Jetty Gallery in Oban (the cruise ships must still be calling) and they’ve asked for more mounted watercolours which seem to be flying out of the gallery. That’s an indoor job for next week. I will have to spend a day varnishing next week which will put my studio out of action so a day indoors painting watercolours will be a good use of my time.
I’m getting through my “jobs” list but new ones keep materialising? At least it’s keeping me busy.