Sold at the Fayre!

This week the biennial exhibition of the East Otago Art and Crafts group in being held at East Otago Events Centre, Waikouaiti, and yesterday a couple took a liking to "Song from the South" and bought it! How lovely it is to have someone like your work enough to part with their hard-earned cash!! 

"Song from the South" (pastel)

Rejection, dejection!

Oh dear! Just heard today that ALL THREE of my entries to this year's Spring Exhibition at the Anderson Park Gallery, Invercargill have been rejected.

Although the official wording says "not accepted" I know what it means all right.... and it means Rejected as far as I am concerned. 

No matter how you look at it having ones paintings thrown out en masse is rather a blow. Especially for a rather prestigious exhibition. Knowing that such things depend upon the personal preferences of the judges/selectors, and that non-acceptance is not necessarily an indication that ones work is no good, is not much comfort when the fact remains that, for whatever reason, ones work did not appeal.

It makes me feel childishly peeved actually!!! (Sad to admit, but true!)

Oh well .... onwards and upwards. And what idiot was it who said that, I wonder?

April ..... almost cooked!

All done except for a few tiny tweaks!

Song from the South (soft pastel)

April .... making progress

April ... starting something else

I've got to get a painting finished and possibly framed for entry into Hope & Sons Annual Art Awards. Entry form has already gone in and paintings must be delivered no later than the weekend of 28th/29th April. Having aborted my large acrylic yesterday I'll have to really get a move on to complete something in time!!!

I've decided to fall back on a subject that I love doing ....... a figure on the beach. Having put the acrylic paints away I've hauled out my soft pastels once again. Hopefully I can put my head down to finish this and sort a frame out in time for D-Day.

Somehow I don't think abstraction is on the menu for me at the moment!!!

Same subject .... two versions

I sometimes try painting the same subject in a different medium. I've just begun a pastel version of the painting I began in acrylic a couple of weeks ago.

Wharfside  (soft pastel version on Colorfix paper)

Meanwhile I am still working on the acrylic version. The main colours have been laid down but it is not finished yet. There is still some glazing work to be done -

Wharfside 1 (acrylic version on canvas)

Pastel Artist - Julie Greig coming here!

How exciting! .... pastel artist Julie Greig has an exhibition opening at The Artist Room Gallery, Dowling Street, Dunedin from 8th October 2011.  Her work is exceptional and I am really looking forward to visiting the show!

'Small Pleasures', soft pastel paintings 1 & 2

Coming along nicely (second in a series)

Soft pastel painting

Untitled

(Pastel, 34cm x 44 cm)

I must thank Matthew Corbett for giving me permission to use photographs of his lovely girls as reference material for a new series of paintings that I have just started. This is the first one but as yet I haven't got a title. Matt's mum, Margaret, was a very much-loved friend who was also lost to cancer, so it is a real privilege to paint her grand-daughters.

Getting back into the swing!

After letting St Paul's 'sit' for a while I decided it could do with a little more colour ..... which, as it turned out, was quite prophetic with the subsequent riots and arson in London .....

After such a long time struggling to get started on the odd painting I am feeling far more inclined to get busy! This week I started a new textured acrylic painting, an abstract, but it was a dismal failure! But I have now drawn up another picture on the canvas and that is ready for painting.

I also began a new soft pastel yesterday - this time the subject matter for both the acrylic and the pastel is a perennial favourite of mine - children on the beach. So hopefully I will get back into the swing at last!

Lavender field (Pastel, 34 x 48 cms)

More about PANZ Awards night!

Here I am with my winning painting! You can see all the winning paintings, plus a selection from all the 91 entries, at PASTEL ARTISTS of NEW ZEALAND (PANZ) Website .......

And here I am talking with artist Julie Greig from Wanganui. Julie is an exceptional pastellist and oil painter who has won multiple awards ..... you can read about her and see some of her wonderful paintings by clicking the link HERE ............

An award for my pastel painting ....

Winter Vase (13 x 19 ins)

Second Prize

Highly Commended

at

"Purely Pastel", Annual National Exhibition
Pastel Artists of New Zealand (PANZ)
25th March - 17th April 2010
Dunedin Historic Railway Station
Dunedin, New Zealand

Carolyn - a Modern Medieval face

Carolyn came round to see her portrait and I was able to have a further look at her .... a few tiny adjustments were necessary after all!!

Work in progress - New pastel painting

Pastel Workshop - Improvers/Intermediate

Intermediate Workshop - what the students produced

Thursday I tutored another pastel workshop for our local art group, and again there were 9 'students' ... so this month there are 18 more (I hope!) confirmed or converted artists using pastel as a preferred medium! Although this session was intended for people familiar with using pastel several attendees were novices/beginners, and I think they did very well. Here are more detailed shots of some the excellent work produced on the day:

Diane's goose (beginner)

Deckchairs by Frances
(complete beginner and only her second time using pastel)

Winsome's Gecko (after Miro)

Gulls by Di W.

Micky's landscape

Bev's Greek idyll

Margaret's 'Girl with penny roses'

Eskimo boy (a work in progress by Jill)

Pastel Workshop - Beginners Please!

Peter's coastal scene

Frances' beach scene

Eva's pepper

Yesterday I tutored a Pastel Workshop for Beginners for the East Otago Art Group. We held it in a local Church Hall and had a lovely productive day. Of the nine participants most were complete beginners in the use of pastel and at least two had only just begun to draw and paint in the past couple of weeks, ... I think the work that they produced is pretty amazing!! Well done all.

Work in progress - Done fiddling! (Truly)

Just could not leave this alone until I felt if was right ... now I am happy with her!

Pastel portrait .... I must stop fiddling right this minute!

Carolyn

Renaissance woman meets the 21st Century (Pastel)