Here’s my summer newsletter. I am shutting up shop for a month from 20th June to 20th July. All going well, we will be safely installed and open for business (online at least) in Donegal by mid-July. I am already longing to get back to my painting routine. I can’t quite believe that after being ground so long by my broken leg and the pandemic that we will actually move house/studio to another country by then. It’s a huge step! Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly!
Delighted to say I have just SOLD “Ilston Brook” directly via my Art Gallery, the “Back Lane Gallery” here in Brynmill Swansea (the lane is the opposite the Rhyddings Pub.)
This oil painting was SOLD to a lovely art collector who visited from Cardiff and had a private viewing before buying this lovely oil painting! I hope to sell more paintings directly via my The Back Lane Gallery in the coming months and years.
“A “refractionist” interpretive oil painting of a brook running through a wood near Ilston in the Gower Peninsula. The winter light combines with the grey haze of barren branched trees to create subtle, almost misty, pinks and purples, softened by the reflective silvery water.”
Buy large prints here
Transforming an art studio into an art gallery – I have recently put some curtains for privacy and a few picture hanging rails onto the white walls of my art studio and it has really transformed it from a studio into somewhere where one can view art, serving as a private viewing space for artlovers to have a look at my paintings in “the flesh”.
Having this viewing space is designed to help artlovers make that final decision about buying my artwork. I have sold dozens of pieces of artwork this way and really enjoy meeting artlovers who like my artwork.
It also helps some artlovers to meet me and to get to know who they will be buying art from. It all adds to the enriching experience of buying art.
Artlovers also often like to hear about the inspiration behind certain paintings and this brings the artwork to life.
Although my paintings are professionally photographed some artlovers simply like to see the paintings in front of their very eyes.
Also artlovers can say, in advance, what paintings, in particular, they would like “hung” or displayed for them to have a closer look at and they will be hung on the white walls ready for them to view.
They can do this in the afternoon or the evening as the tracking lights enable viewing in the evening too.
Although Spring has sprung I am still painting in my attic studio, too cold to be in the outside cabin studio.
My skylight is north facing which is the best light for painting as one gets a good constant light all day. In the evening I supplant whatever existing day light there is by switching on the “day lights” seen in this photo so that I can get a few more hours work in the evening.
I do however prefer to paint in the day and usually use evening for prep work or to outline the painting to be painted the next day. I like to leave a painting primed for painting the next day as I am a morning person and like to get stuck in early as possible in the morning, usually around 6.30am.
In a meditative manner, to the music of Eric Satie’s gorgeous “Trois Gymnopedies”, I attempt to describe how working close to nature but in the city is a major influence on my painting, blending with my technique to create my artwork. In fact, place and painting are inseparable. I am greatly influenced by the light and beauty in Wales and around the Swansea area in particular. Most of my paintings inspired by the bountiful beauty that surrounds me, the sounds as well as the images. You might even notice the odd inspiration that made it to be a painting too (as well as the odd painting of my inspirational Swansea). Welcome to my Attic Art Studio and the place and surrounding area that inspires much of my artwork.
At present I work mainly from my attic art studio as the sky light enables me to paint most of the day, normally from 6.30 am onwards. It is also warmer than my newly built garden studio which I am sure will come into it’s own in Spring and Summer.
At present it is too cold and glum, plus my husband is planning to cut and lay huge boulders as rustic garden steps in the next few weeks. I will be using Clearwell boulders from the Forest of Dean and buying the stone from a company called Wyestone in Herefordshire which recently supplied stone to the Chelsea Flower Show and also featured on Alan Titchmarsh’s “Love our Garden”.
In fact, the waney edge wooden cladding on my new garden art studio is from The Old Mill Yard in Carmarthenshire which also featured on a television program recently when the timber yard was featured on George Clarke’s “Amazing Spaces”.
When the light fades in my attic art studio I switch on a combination of blue artificial “day” lights so that I can squeeze a bit more painting time in the evening too. My house and art studio overlook two parks, Singleton and Brynmill, here in Swansea, Wales. I can hear swans, ducks, various birds from my attic studio as well as magpies, seagulls and ravens scurrying across the tiled roof of the house. I love the sounds of nature and the sounds of children playing as I paint. It is very relaxing and conducive to painting, listening to these sounds amid the bustle of a city.
Hopefully I will be even more immersed in the sounds of nature from my new studio.
This is a mock “How to….” video detailing the steps in building an art studio/gallery in one’s back garden.
As I need more room to paint (I paint in my attic art studio at present) as my paintings get increasingly bigger, my husband project managed the building of an art complex at our home so that artlovers can visit for a private viewing of my artwork in the art gallery and also buy paintings, prints and so on from his log cabin office.
I have sold dozens of pieces of artwork this way and really enjoy meeting artlovers who love my artwork. Having a viewing space is designed to help artlovers make that final decision about buying my artwork.
It also helps some artlovers to meet the artist and to get to know who they will be buying art from. It all adds to the enriching experience of buying art.
Artlovers also often like to hear about the inspiration behind certain paintings and this brings the artwork to life. Although my paintings are professionally photographed some artlovers simply like to see the paintings in front of their very eyes. If you want to book a date to visit me at my home then contact me and arrange an appointment. We will be happy to see you!
I was delighted to see my two Donegal paintings “Up Bloody Foreland, Donegal” and “The through Road, Donegal” on the walls of the London Irish Centre (Camden, London). These two oil paintings form part of a “real room” of an Irish family in 1950s Britain installation. The exhibition, which is on during August through to […]
Donegal is a big mountaneous county in a big country. Imagine my shock when I discover that it’s only the 4th largest in Ireland (after Cork, Galway and Mayo) at 4,860 km2 (1,880 sq miles). It seems even bigger as there is no railway or motorways here, so it takes a long time to travel around all the mountains. One of joys of the county is that it’s relatively empty (the 5th least populated in Ireland) with 32.6 people per km2.
There’s a good reason why landscape painters use the “landscape” orientation for their canvases – i.e. the longest side is horizontal – and that’s because you can fit more landscape in that way. I have recently discovered another good reason – social media and wordpress thumbnails don’t like tall narrow paintings and crop them.
Everybody loves the Georgian Houses It seems like certain styles never go out of fashion. Last year Georgian-style houses topped a poll of the most popular home styles. I suspect that people like scale of the house as well as the the pillars and generous sized windows. Nothing says lord of the manor like a […]
