Looking back at the year this one is certainly different to last year, because at the end of last year I knew I wanted to find an online art gallery to sell some of my older artwork, and avidly looked through the choices available to me through January and February. It turned out that some of the bigger names were not right because they weren’t in the right place or their artwork for sale wasn’t of a high enough quality to find the right sort of buyers looking for quality artwork, which I knew mine was… I eventually found the perfect one for me, based in England, www.artgallery.co.uk I liked their way of doing business, found their advice most helpful and started compiling a list of the drawings and paintings I wanted to sell. And of course had to take photos of all of those pieces of artwork, at least four for each one..the main picture of the artwork, a close up of it, a side view of it to show depth, and one of it with a plain background, and I had over 70 pieces of artwork to sell…!!! So that took up most of March… I had been advised to drip feed the artwork onto my online shop so I did that and was most delighted to be told within a few weeks that I had been awarded ‘Artist of the week’ by them, and bearing in mind that they have a lot of International artists on their website, it meant a lot to me for that wonderful accolade!!!
Since I had to sort out through my old artwork to ascertain what I wanted to sell, I also found two pieces of artwork that I’d done at art workshops a few years ago when I was a member of Ashby Guild of Artists in Leicestershire. They were each on board with torn up coloured paper, newspaper, and tissue paper added for texture and colour and inks added to make collages but I hadn’t finished them. Of course now I am far more experienced as an artist and when I looked at the collages I could see that with additions of acrylic paint I could complete them…so that’s what I did and created ‘Tree of hope’…..
And ‘Full moon tonight’ .. I love the drama of both of the paintings and the way the collage adds so much to the painting with the torn paper..
So now I had all the older artwork I wanted to sell photographed and ready I could then look at painting another painting.
I always love painting water because its so difficult and challenging, and I thought I’d try and find a subject that featured fire as well.. and this is the acrylic painting I created from that idea..Its called ‘Courage under fire’ and i love the mythical aspect of the fire monster and Vikings about to confront it.
The next painting I did also with the thought of loving painting water was this surreal one of double water…the beautiful woman, in her metallic gown and long flowing hair is almost a mermaid, but she’s in a high prowed boat with a wooden spear, whilst turtles and fish swim around her. The acrylic painting is called ‘Fishing with turtles’ and I love the quirky double water aspect of it. It was one of the most challenging paintings I’ve ever done, to get the glimpse of the fish through the water and sunlight coming from above, let alone the woman herself in her metallic gown, I love it!
So…this year might look like I’ve not painted much…but I’ve been working very hard through the year both on sorting out old artwork…and creating exciting new artwork…