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Posts Tagged ‘North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition’

North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition 2015

It’s that time of year again when the annual North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition takes place.  , I entered one of my scribbled pastel drawings and one of my more traditional 80 x 80 cm acrylic and pastel paintings.  Both I’m pleased to say, have been selected for the exhibition.   A quick look through the catalogue this morning  revealed a good turn out from the Courtyard Studios artists this year  as well as work by several former Courtyard Studios artists.  The exhibition preview is tomorrow evening starting at 7.30 pm and it takes place at the Racquet Hall in Eglinton Country Park, Kilwinning.  The exhibition then runs for two weeks.   Being an open exhibition with over 100 works on display, there is always something for everyone and it makes for an enjoyable visit…..especially so if you add on a wander through the beautiful surrounding parkland while you’re there.

'Breaking mists on Mam na Gualainnt', on display at the North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition

‘Breaking mists on Mam na Gualainnt’, on display at the North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition

The last two weeks have been a strange mix for me.  I’ve spent many days working in the studio.  I have quite a lot of different things on the go at the moment which is nice.  I’ve got back to using oil colour again and have been working on three different canvases, all of which I started last year and then put to one side.    I’m also creating nine new small size (210 x 148 mm) graphite drawings for my forthcoming exhibition in Edinburgh in August.  Busy, busy, busy!

Last Thursday Nita and I drove up to Pitlochry to collect the work at the end of my exhibition at the John Muir Trust wild Space.  It was a good experience showing work there and although I only sold one painting, my gift cards sold well ….so as a way of marketing my work and introducing my paintings to a wider audience, it was very successful.  The Wild Space is right on the main street in Pitlochry and close to where all the coaches park up.  As such the centre gets a large number of visitors both UK and from abroad and so a lot of people will have seen my work for the first time.  Anyway, a big thank you to Jane Grimley (JMT Wild Space Manager) and her staff for making me so welcome and for inviting me to show my work with the John Muir Trust.   To find out more about the John Muir Trust and the important work it does, visit:  www.jmt.org

I’ve just received an email from my colleague Dan Thornton, the photographer and film maker based in Seattle.    As you know, he has been making an hour long documentary about my work and we are now in the process of raising the funds to get the editing done.  I’ve donated seven paintings and some prints which are now with Dan in Seattle and he is setting up an auction and publicity event to raise awareness of the project.  He is also setting up a kick starter campaign for the same purpose and this should be underway around the start of August.  I’ll obviously post more details nearer the time.

The next big project for me is my exhibition at “the gallery on the corner” in Edinburgh.  I’ll be showing something in region of 30 pieces of work I think and the exhibition preview is on August 7th 2015.  The exhibition then runs until 29th August.  I’m really looking forward to this show as the gallery is such a great space.  The exhibition is on during the Edinburgh Festival so if you’re in the city, you could take a well earned breather from all the festival shows and enjoy looking at some peaceful, quiet paintings of the Scottish Highlands.  Full details of this exhibition to follow shortly.

 One other plan for the not too distant future is to visit the arts centre in Dumfries.  My partner Nita is making some great pieces in porcelain and we are starting to think about holding an exhibition together.  A colleague has suggested we look at the arts centre down in Dumfries as a possible venue for the show…..so, early days but visiting the centre would start the process.  More on this project as things develop.

Sadly we haven’t been able to get out walking since our trip to Glen Douglas the other week but I’m hopeful we can make it out sometime soon.  Fingers crossed, I’m starting to get withdrawal symptoms again!

A working week

New framed drawing

New framed drawing

It’s been a fairly quiet week this week, but one during which I’ve got quite a lot of work done. Nita was working night shifts last Saturday and Sunday and has been working twelve and a half hour day shifts Thursday and Friday ….leaving very few opportunities to get back onto the hills. Tuesday really was the only day but this turned out to be very wet and windy. Although a few years ago we’d have gone out anyway, these days we prefer to wait for slightly better weather. With Nita working part time now and me being self employed it means that we generally have far more opportunities to get out and so don’t have to go when it’s bad. It’s also a question for me, of getting my priorities right. The walks are very important to the works I do and as I don’t, generally get that much out of walking along for eight hours in cloud and rain, it makes a lot more sense to stay in the studio and paint when the weather is really grim.

I’ve been continuing to work on the new small paintings for my exhibition at Blairmore Gallery near Dunoon. The work has gone well and I now have four 30 x 30 cm paintings completed and one new 76 x 23 cm piece too. I’ve also started two more 30 x 30 cm pieces and have plans for another two also. The space at Blairmore isn’t vast but in the past when I’ve held exhibitions there I’ve usually included around 17 or 18 pieces including one of the larger paintings or drawings. This year I’m also working on several new small line drawings, (postcard size) and may well include 2 or 3 of these. It’s always about this time ahead of a show that I start to get an idea of what work will be included and an idea in my head of what it will look like. Anyway, I’ve still got 5 weeks so plenty of time to change my mind over and over again ….needless to say, this drives Nita to despair!

New Glen Rosa drawing framed

New Glen Rosa drawing framed

It’s that time of year again and tomorrow we’ll be delivering the two works for the North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition. As the works to be hung are chosen by a selection panel, you always have an agonising few day wait to see if your own pieces have made it into the show ….a list of selected works is posted on-line later in the week ….it’s all quite exciting. The best thing to do is to try and forget about it ….and keep your fingers crossed! This year, for a change, I’m entering two of my graphite drawings, rather than paintings. I got them back from the framers the other week and have had a chance to see them in the studio for a short while. Hopefully there will be a good response to them but you can never tell ….they may be rejected ….there’s a lot of competition out there and there are always a lot of entries. Full details about how I get on, in next weeks blog.

Our next opportunities to get out on the hills will be from Sunday to Thursday and we’re hoping to make a trip either over to Glen Shee or to Glen Lochy to walk Creag Mhor. We also have to try and fit in a quick trip over to ‘the gallery on the corner’ in Edinburgh as I have some new work for them…..looks like being a busy busy week ahead.

Next step

 ' A January morning, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran'

‘ A January morning, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran’

As any of you who visit my Face Book page will know, I’ve been doing some more drawing this last week.  The drawing, to be titled, ‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’ is small than the last few pieces and is square as opposed to rectangular.  I wanted it to be similar in size to the 80 x 80 cm paintings I do and so cut the paper to this size.  As you know though, I do like my drawings to have a rough edge and so the actual image size on the paper is 70 x 70 cm, ….give or take few millimetres, leaving a white border all around..

When we were over on Harris last month we had, to our surprise, one day of heavy sleet and snow.  The following day we did a great little walk through a glen between the hills.  The snow was really quite low on the hillsides …less the 100 m and after a few kilometres the path reached a bealach at about 130m.  Even at this height there were several centimetres of snow on the ground and everything looked quite wild and wintry.   By this time though, it was thawing and the streams were really full, cascading down their rocky beds in a mass of white water and it struck me how similar it looked to the patterns made by the snow lying on the rocky hillsides above.  We spent a long time wondering and looking and I decided that I’d have to do some drawings based on this scene and idea.  ‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’ is my first attempt and I’m already working on a second piece that will be more abstract, more about the patterns of marks.

'Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013'

‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’

Anyway, this first piece is finished I think and I’ve decided that it might be fun to enter it for the forth-coming North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition.  As you can enter up to two pieces, I’ve decided that I might as well enter one of the other recent graphite drawings too.  Of course, the next step is to decide quite how to have them framed.  I normally use a distressed ‘York’ silver frame with a simple mount behind glass, for my smaller paintings and I had at first thought I do with this.  However, I wasn’t sure whether the silver would work with these quite stark graphite images and so went to my framer at the Waverley Gallery in Prestwick seeking some advice and ideas.

I’ve always found selecting a frame very difficult and so to be honest I wasn’t looking forward to this part of the business.  Amazingly though, Tim had the perfect solution …a very simple charcoal coloured frame.  The moment he put it down against the drawing I knew this was the one and although we tried several other options we came back to this first choice.  To retain the ‘rough’ edge of the drawing, there will be no mount, just the glass sitting directly onto the paper.  I’m quite excited and am looking forward to seeing the pieces framed in this way especially as the second piece I’ve chosen is one of the large Glen Rosa drawings.

Well then, that’s about it for this week.  Nita and I are finally starting to get over the nasty bug we’ve had although my voice is still very rough.  Needless to say there have been a few jokes down at the studios about my needing to take up singing the blues instead of painting!  Of course though, we haven’t been out walking for over three weeks now and have been missing all the fine weather which has been most annoying and now that we’re starting to plan our next outing ….the rain is back on!  Hopefully by next week we’ll have made it out onto a hill and my next blog can include a few nice photos of the Scottish Highlands.

A good week

'From the slopes of Beinn Griam Beg, Sutherland'

'From the slopes of Beinn Griam Beg, Sutherland'

Once again, this is going to be a rather short blog.  This evening we’re going to the preview of the annual North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition.  I entered two works for this show and luckily both were accepted, (images of the two paintings are shown here).  My partner Anita also entered two of her small new porcelain pieces and these too have been included in the exhibition.  The show normally includes around about 120 works I guess and it’s always worth paying a visit.  There is always a huge variety of work to see and you can almost guarantee to see something that you really like.

One added bonus for me is that I’ve just been told that one of my paintings, (‘A frozen February afternoon, Beinn an Dothaidh’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2012, 80 x 80 cm) won one of the prizes at this year’s exhibition ….the Miller Prize.  Sponsored by Millers in Glasgow the prize is apparently £150 worth of vouchers to be spent at Millers.  Wow!  I’m already looking forward to spending them….it’s a great art materials shop!  I’ve been thinking about treating myself to a couple of really big canvases …so this might be my excuse!

'A freezing February afternoon, Beinn an Dothaidh'

'A freezing February afternoon, Beinn an Dothaidh'

Anyway, the exhibition is at the Racquet Hall, EglintonPark, North Ayrshire.  It runs from July 7th – July 21st and is open10 am – 4pm each day.  As I say, it’s always well worth a visit and after seeing the exhibition, you can always enjoy a walk in the country park.