A Wonderful Arty Weekend
Arty day on Saturday. Headed to Paperchase for more hand-made paper. They no longer have a great range except for heavy printed stuff which isn’t any good for me but I got what I could. Next stop Cass Art for canvases on sale for my painting adventures.
Then on to Roy’s People Art Fair at the Oxo Tower by the river. Feet are killing by now as breaking in my latest trainers (TK Maxx bargain). Have love/hate relationship with that shop. Buy most of my clothes there cos high street chains are usually boooring. Never know what you’ll find in TKMaxx though.
Anyhow, interesting mix of work. Most not to my taste. Went mostly because my office manager, Rachel Maritz, is an excellent abstract artist and was showing there. Read right past her name on the show leaflet –three times - then walked into 2nd floor display room and BAM! Immediately saw the wonderful colours (above a little group of people gathered round) and thought – ah, there you are. That’s the way you want to be. Instant recognition of your style. Had my eye constantly on the largest piece for sale (see below © Rachel Maritz). If I had the wall space and could've got it back on the tube/train then I'd have been sorely tempted. But I know she has a house full of paintings...
We chatted a bit and met Sarah Warrs, an Instagrammer follower of Chel and mixed media artist. We had a mad 10 minutes swapping techniques and media and Sarah and I said we’d apply for the October fair (and stop putting off doing something like this), and I promised to look into signing up for Instagram. Now, I have a hate/hate relationship with anything connected to Facebook. I do not like these people, who have shown nothing but contempt for the privacy of their users. Still, I can see that Instagram is a great tool for artists. FB just have to buy up the good stuff and ruin it don’t they, but I shall ponder on this one all the same. There is a price for everything.
Had a quick look at some 100 'best' sculpture Instagrams. A lot of the work was…horrible. I don’t mean bad, more unpleasant or grotesque; human/creature things that looked like a Star Trek transporter malfunction, Alien-style weird heads, fangs, blood..stuff… type…things (shudders). Wouldn’t want any of that in my house. Maybe it's a trend or something. That's the thing about art/music/writing/social media etc. It really is the full range of human experience and psyche given form so of course, a lot of it won't resonate with us. On the plus side, it means somewhere there are people who will like what I do so it’s all fine really.
OK, I have a painting that needs some consideration. Have two in progress that were started on Sunday…fabulous colours; questionable composition but I’m working on that!
