Earlier this year, Fiona at The Strathearn Gallery in Crieff, asked me if I could let them have six paintings for the Battersea Park Affordable Art Fair. The gallery is taking a stand at the fair this autumn and it seems a great opportunity.
Of course, it’s always difficult deciding quite which pieces to send and to be honest I changed my mind a few times before finally settling on the six paintings. Fiona has asked for two small pieces, three medium and one large. I had the choice of two large pieces but in the end have gone with ‘Below Cul Mor, Assynt’. This is quite a bold piece for me, with bright colours and broad sweeps of paint. It is based on the view of the main rocky summit of the hill from the small loch that nestles below it in an area of beautiful exposed horizontal beds of red sandstone. We sat here for a while a couple of years ago, contemplating the steep and at the top, rocky ascent ahead of us.
The three medium size pieces were slightly more difficult to select. At first I was going to include three of my long thin 76 x 23 cm paintings, but in the end I’ve omitted one of these and have included instead the slightly larger piece, ‘Winter afternoon, Beinn Dorain’. I think this will work well with the Cul Mor painting as it has similar sweeps of paint and is another quite bold piece.
When it came to the two small pieces I was swayed by popular opinion. Last weekend at the Courtyard studios Open Weekend I had a number of my small 30 x 30 cm paintings on display and a couple of them were getting a lot of attention. These were ‘Autumn grasses, Beinn Inverveigh’ and ‘On Beinn a’Ghlo, autumn’.
I’m currently sat in the kitchen typing this and upstairs Anita has the six paintings. In the past I’ve managed to send paintings to galleries that have on occasions had marks on their frames and on one infamous occasion, even sent one small piece with its glass missing! The joys of limited vision I’m afraid and so now I ask Nita to check all the work before we wrap it up and send it off to the gallery.
So then, that’s us away up to Crieff tomorrow to deliver the work to The Strathearn Gallery. From Irvine it’s about an hour and three quarters in the car I guess and once beyond Glasgow the route goes through some very pleasant country….so it’ll make a nice trip. Rising just to the north of the town, are the hills surrounding Loch Turret. You may remember we were walking up here early this year and we’re now planning another walk in the area one day soon. I’m hoping it’ll be warm enough to sit and do some sketching as I really want to get some paintings done of this beautiful area.
If you’re in London and can get along to the fair, the details are:
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Park, London
The Strathearn Gallery stand number is: I 14.
The fair opens on Wednesday evening 20th October.
The last day of the fair is Sunday 24th October.