Knowle Art Group exhibition 2014

I have been very busy with my art groups exhibition over the past two weeks but it was all worth while. The exhibition was held over a very sunny holiday weekend and visitors were 30% up on our previous highest figure.

Unfortunately, it seems that money is as tight as ever despite the chancellor talking the economy up. We only sold one painting in the actual exhibition although several items which were on sale (unframed paintings and greeting cards) were sold.

We have discussed the purpose of our exhibtion many times and have always agreed, as a group, that the exhibtion is a chance to show off our work to family and friends and just to see it in a well-presented display. sales are nice but that is not the reason we spend so much time and effort setting up the exhibition. The effort is not worth the money. But let me show you a general shot of the hall after setting up the exhiubtion.

The display boards are the groups own design and made by members, they enable us to hold exhibitions in any locations but we have found the present venue to be a superb choice for our exhibitions.

The design of the boards allows us to display more paintings per foot. We have ten boards altogether which fold away after use.

The main entrance display, showing the Group Name. This year flanked by items for sale for the first time:-

Greeting cards/ post cards and unframed paintings and also a number of miniature canvas paintings which readers of the blog will know are a favourite of mine.

The cards sold well this year and from the discussions going on I can see more artists trying to make a little cash next year by copying this approach, despite the comments above!

Back with more paintings next time.

2014 Exhibition Of KNOWLE ART GROUP

I have been a little busy preparing my entries for my art groups annual exhibition in May. Most year I have been prone to have to rush around the day before the hand over day, but this year I have cracked it. All ready for the day except for a little spit and polish of the frames.

I think I have posted all of these on this blog over the last three months or so but if you want a better look at these paintings then you could slip over to my new static web-site, PASTEL LANDSCAPES. Created under my real name, John Dyhouse, although just to be sure the first (home page) states:-

JOHN DYHOUSE is

ARTYFAX

Hope to see you over there, why not post me a message to say hello; that would be great. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible now that the bulk of the effort for the exhibition is complete.

John Hopkins Demonstration at Knowle Art Group

I have mentioned my art group (Knowle Art Group) many times, mostly it is a way of providing a little discipline into a very busy life. Once a week at least I sort out a few supplies, get into the car and drive to a meeting with some fellow artists where we all sit around and paint. Oh and we also put the world to rights while busily painting it. There is no formality, we all simply get on with painting anything that takes our fancy and the group uses, individually, a number of mediums. Oil, acrylic, pastel and of course watercolour are all represented. It is a small and happy group and we enjoy our Tuesday evenings. I am afraid that I have too many distractions these days to find time to paint in a very busy life, so attendance is the spur to create art.

However, four or five times a year we have what we call one of our special nights. These take the form of demonstrations or workshops, as many of them as possible with professional artists in the lead. Being a smallish group, we have to watch the pennies, after paying for the rental of the premises, exhibition expenses, refreshments for out meetings and various other fees we spend any surplus on demos by professional artists. One such artist, who gave us a very interesting and inspiring demonstration yesterday, is

 John Hopkins. 

John is a local professional artist with a very informal approach who is always willing to fully answer all the questions put to him. The group has in fact received several demos from John (see another) and one or two members know him from classes which he holds locally. You can see some of his watercolour paintings in his site gallery.

I am posting here a couple of watercolour sketches which I did some time ago, I guess that this type of painting still comes over in my pastel work. In fact the second was a painting which I did as a demonstration to the group, once upon a time, because of a large influx of  inexperienced painters and we put on a number of demos to try to encourage them.

But I have not done any water colour painting for some time. However, when we have these demos it is surprising how inspiring they can be. I have a small project on with the miniature acrylic canvases mentioned in the last two posts; I fully intend to do a few more for potential sale on Ebay, etc. I will be dusting off the watercolour paints though and putting in a little practice to get the feel of a brush back. Watch this space!

2012 exhibition Knowle Art group

My Art Group is holding its annual exhibition next weekend at the Church Hall in Knowle, where else? I was busy this weekend framing my entries and the dining room table came in very handy.

The eight paintings above and the two in my last post plus one other, make a total of eleven entries. However, as space is usually at a premium I may not get to have all of them in the catelogue. They are all pastel paintings and those above are obviously abstract or semi-abstract. The core of the work that I have been doing this past year. The other three are much larger (2X at least) and are actually a more realistic set of paintings.

We always hope that one or two paintings may be sold but locally there are so many outlets, shops and galleries selling prints at silly prices including IKEA; and of course to compete with these big stores is very difficult. Over the past few years our paintings have been exhibited with a reducing price tag and I have rebelled this year. I have doubled the prices I am asking. Will this make potential buyers take more note of the paintings? I doubt it but at least it will give me a certain satisfaction.

I stopped offering my paintings on Ebay just because they were selling for ridiculous prices, I am not going to give any more away. Anybody know a good site which attracts art buyers who know the value of a painting. The ones I have tried just don't get the visitors that Ebay can attract. Sad really!