Talking about Art Archives – Page 3 of 9

Posted on June 14, 2020July 17, 2020 by emma cownie — 30 Comments

Back in the studio!

Finally, I managed to scale the steep steps to my attic studio! One step at a time. Holding on the handrails.

Ah, what pleasure it was to be back in the attic. It has a view out the back of the house. It is a great pleasure to look at the wooded parks and hills of West Swansea instead of the unrelenting concrete streets and terrace houses out the front of the house. I have a number of commissions to fulfill but I wanted to “warm up” with some small paintings first as I have been working with watercolours for the past two months. Here’s a selection:-

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Table Mountain (Crug Hywel)

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My first reaction to oil paint was how slow it all is in comparison with watercolours. With watercolours, most of the effort goes into planning and preparation and then the execution of the painting itself is quick. Putting oil paint on the canvas was more laborious that watercolours. I also had to rummage around for looking for the right sort of paintbrushes, a few times. I could not quite lay my hands on what I needed. But, ah! The paint did what I thought it was going to do. What joy! If I changed my mind about a composition or decided that something did not work I could wipe it off the canvas. It did not reproach me for making a mistake by showing it to the world for ever! Nice!

Anyway, I sat down and started a series of new Donegal paintings. Here they are.

Painting of Donegal Cottage — Wee House on Gola, Donegal (SOLD)

Painting of Storm Clouds Over Inshbofin, Ireland — Storm Over Inshbofin, Ireland (SOLD)

The Two Tin-Roofed Sheds, Arranmore, Ireland

Painting of house on Gola, Donegal, Ireland — Blue Door, Gola (SOLD)

The Old Stone Shed Arranmore Ireland

These paintings are from the past few weeks. I have also worked on two commissions. It has been slow work at times as I often need a lunchtime nap to keep my energy levels up. I do my rehab exercises several times a day which can be very tiring. On a positive note, I finally got to speak to a physiotherapist, Josh, who has been very helpful. He has posted exercises to me and giving me guidance on how much to do. I can walk upstairs reasonably well, but downstairs one step at a time. When I get tired my ankle gets sore and I limp. I try and avoid that if I can.

What did I learn from watercolours? That I can and should edit and play around with compositions more. I simplified my images as much as I could. I changed the skies or left out an inconvenient house. I found this freeing and I brought an element of this to my oil paintings. For some reason, I have felt to need to be truthful to the real-life locations I painted. I realise now that I don’t have to. I can happily leave out a telegraph pole or a lamp post if it confuses the composition.

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Wren

Watercolour painting of robin

What do I miss about watercolours? The tidiness. Clean clothes and hands. The lack of chaos. The speed. The brushes that don’t wear out by the time you have finished a large painting. The lightness. They convey the lightness of birds better than oil colours. Also the convenience, I could pack away all my paper, paints, and brushes in one big bag. I am looking forward to using them outside when I can walk much longer distances!

Emma Cownie Artist — Painting in the studio with my leg up!

Posted on February 23, 2020July 17, 2020 by emma cownie — 15 Comments

Still life paintings

This will be a short post as I am nursing a painful left elbow on an ice pack. I developed bursitis on Friday, I am not sure why as I didn’t hit my elbow on anything but too many sun salutations in yoga is my number one suspect.

We have had a lot of really bad weather lately. We seem to be cantering our way through the alphabet of storms: Atiyah, Brendan, Ciara, Dennis, Ellen, Francis etc. This means I have rarely left the house, except to buy food, walk the dogs in our local park or to go to a yoga class, although yoga will be out of bounds until my elbow recovers now.

So, whilst Storm Ciara was blasting her way overhead, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to set up a number of still life compositions to work from. I had painted a number of largish canvases (80x60cm) and felt in wanted to paint something smaller for variety’s sake, and also something that I could complete in a short (gloomy) day.

My past forays into Still Life painting explored paleness/whiteness, and they were largely inspired by the work of Morandi. These were medium-sized paintings. I liked the calmness of the plain backgrounds.

Still life – cup and teapot

Still Life Painting

In this short series of paintings, I was more interested in colour. I was particularly inspired by a patterned cloth that my husband, Seamas, had found in a charity shop many years ago. I liked the warmth of the colours.

This was my first painting. I liked the way the colours of the flowers chimed with the fruit on the plate.

I think my second painting was better probably helped by better light on the day that I painted it.

Then I decided to focus on the fruit. A tiny slice of it!

Then finally a more traditional composition with a cup and red cloth. I have noticed before how I am drawn to painting reds in winter.

The bright colours in these paintings cheered me up. Having completed this short series I felt ready to return to large canvases and more muted tones.

Posted on December 20, 2019May 30, 2020 by emma cownie — 15 Comments

Park Fish Bar: The Story of two Paintings

This post has been prompted by the response & comments I got on Instagram when I posted a photo of a painting I had reworked.

I came across this early painting when I was sorting through my crowded attic studio. I had forgotten I had it. It took a while to work out how long ago I painted it. It was 4 years ago! It was part of a series of night-time paintings of Brynmill, Swansea, I did in the course of winter of 2015-6. I later went on to develop a series of daytime paintings in the summer of 2017, which formed by the “Hollowed Community” exhibition as part of the Made in Roath, Cardiff, Arts Festival of that year.

I looked at my painting with my 2019 eyes. Sometimes a period of separation enables you to see the painting the way others do. Often this is a happy experience. Not in this case. I liked the light and the shadows but I thought it was a little untamed. The red brick pub opposite the chip shop, The Ryddings pretty much worked. The sky, however, was a bit too messy for me. I don’t usually rework my paintings but this one was bugging me. I nearly worked beautifully, but it didn’t. So I set about to repainting parts of it. Some window sills also needed straightening. The double yellow lines at the bottom of the painting certainly did. The sky then needed “flattening” to create a calmer and tighter painting. After I had done this, I felt a lot happier with the painting. It still has some of the exuberance of the original but it was more disciplined. It has more presence.

Swansea painting — Park Fish Bar 2019 Version

(SOLD)

This chip shop has a long history; much longer than I realised. The Park Fish Bar used to have a sign out the front that says it’s Wales’s oldest chip shop (I’ll have to check it see if it’s still there the next time I pass it). It think it said “Since 1977” When I posted a photo of the reworked painting on Instagram Matt (@seamatt79) wrote that it had been a fishmonger or fish shop called “Park View Fisheries” since 1918. Apparently, they sold fish during the day and cooked the fish with chips in the evening. That’s a century of fish and chips in Brynmill. I don’t think there was a centenary celebration last year, which is a shame.

Matt said that he was there in the 1990s the Waterloo Place-side window was replaced (window on the far left of the white building in the painting). An old man who lived in Trafalgar Place came by and told the story of how he helped put the window in as a young boy when during World War Two a German bomb “landed on the corner of Marlborough Road and blew out all the glass”. The corner of Malborough Road is just to the left of the painting. A lot has happened since I painted the original in 2015. Jeff who ran the chip ship since the 1980s had retired and the shop has had two different managers since then.

I was also asked on Instagram by James Potter, another Swansea artist, what the original painting looked like. There are some things you just can’t explain properly on Instagram, so here it is on my WordPress blog!

Happy Christmas to all my fellow bloggers, followers, and readers alike!

Posted on September 22, 2019October 13, 2019 by emma cownie — 10 Comments

Art of the Protest

My career as a student activist was a decidely inglorious one. I was a lazy student when it came to protests and demonstrations. I think I may have gone on maybe three or four demos in all my time as a student. Some of them were protests about against introduction of student fees and a later one was against the building of the Cardiff Barrage. I caught a bad chill after getting soaked at one demo in London and was ill in bed for a week. Sadly, I never had the courage/organisational ability to make my own poster or banner. That takes thought and effort. So I’d end up holding a boring printed poster made by some radical left-wing organisation that didn’t quite sum up my sentiments. So I am always very interested in what people put on their home made posters. I wrote a some blog posts about Art and Protest in Art of the Protest (also in Germany & China) quite a while ago, but this is about a homemade protest.

On Friday there was the global Climate Strike to protest about the climate crisis. I had no thought of going along until I heard the day before that adults were asked to attend too. There were hundreds of people of all ages in the centre of Swansea. The fact that it was a hot sunny day in late September, just seemed to illustrate what is going wrong with the climate. Extinction Rebellion had a big presence, many of its supporters were carrying homemade drums (made from plastic washing up bowls and dustbins). They have a clever logo which is a clever play on the “X” in Exctintion and an hour glass, implying that we are running out of time.

There is an Extinction Rebellion sticker is at the bottom of the poster

I know a Swansea artist, who has given up painting to direct all her energies into working for this environmental group that believes in non-violent protest. They divide opinion, even amongst environmentalists, who say that their activities may be cause the government to increase anti-protest legislation rather than focusing on tackling climate crisis. Yet, they were only one of many organisations that came to their protest. There were people from political parties, trade unions, the Quakers, the Wildlife Trust, as well just ordinary people. One of the student organisers, who was one of the stewarts, worked with Swansea Trades Council. He said they’d been planning this protest for months and he was delighted at the numbers who had turned up.

Here are a selection of the wonderful homemade posters. I particularly liked the ones made by children. They had clearly spent a lot of time designing and making them.

Made on a pillowcase

Teenagers’s posters tended to be simpler with clear and heart-felt statements

#16 — Just in case you wanted to criticse her for missing school…

The rally then morphed into a march that wound its way through the busy shopping streets of Swansea.

Stopped some traffic…and ended up outside the guildhall where anyone in the crowd was invited to step to say a few words. So they did. Young and old.

Although it wasn’t planned the march ended up inside the Guildhall inside the Council chambers. I think the protesters just asked to be let in and the security guards let them. This was later reported in the local newspapers as the protest “occupying” the council chambers and the police removing them. It was hardly, that. It was a bunch of well-behaved kids, and a few adults. Some of the adults and kids said a few words including part of a speech by climate activitst Greta Thunberg. Although we probably had all had heard her say those words before, they were still moving. We all then filed out, chanting and druming all the way. There were some police near by, chatting to each other, in their van. It was very benign. You can watch a clip of it on the BBC website here. It was much more fun than my student day protests!

So it seems that protests and posters are like a good party. They need a fair bit of preparation. You hope people will turn up. Finally, you probably enjoy other people’s far more than your own!

Posted on September 1, 2019June 11, 2020 by emma cownie — 13 Comments

Derek Hill and Glebe House

On a grey overcast day, when the clouds seemed always about to descend on us, we drove to a smart red Georgian house by Lough Gartan, near a place called Churchill (Irish: Mín an Lábáin). This is Glebe House.

It had been the home of the English-born artist Derek Hill, who died in 2000. He had bought this massive estate in the 1940s for the bargain price of £1000. There was a sign in the car park, I wish I had taken a photo of it now, which pointed out the guests who were planning to explore the extensive grounds to be well-prepared as “Winter weather can happen at any time of the year in Donegal”.

We had a tour around the house. There were about 10 of us in our group. What a house! It was a riot of colour and packed with fascinating objects and artworks. I loved the design and feel of the house.

If was an interior designer, I’d use it as a source of inspiration. I spent a lot of time, thinking, I’d love a chesterfield sofa like that, or the patchwork quilt is to die for! It was beautiful, artistic and decidedly a home too.

We were, unfortunately, hurried around the house and asked not to take photographs (I took a few before this message got through to me). The explanation given for this was there were plenty of good photos on the website. It wasn’t about flashlight damaging the artifacts, as no one was using flash photography. I suspect, however, it was so that they could speed us around the house as quickly as possible. I went to the website, afterward expecting a feast of photographs, but was disappointed by the limited number of images. There was nothing wrong with the photos, it’s just that there were not enough of them. There were so many fascinating objects and paintings in the house that weren’t properly documented on the website.

Drawing Room, OPW, from the official website

Cecil Beaton's Portrait of Greta Garbo — Cecil Beaton’s Portrait of Greta Garbo

At the end of the tour my head was buzzing with the names of so many artists, whose works hung on the walls of the house (Picasso, Victor Passmore, Francis Bacon, James Dixon, Edward Landseer) and stories about the rich and famous friends of Derek Hill’s who came to visit, including Hollywood star Great Garbo who only ate slice apples. Actually, little is known about her 1967 visit and that gap was filled by writer Frank McGuinness’s play “Greta Garbo Came to Donegal“.

Derek Hill came from a very wealthy family and (based on this tour) never seemed to struggle much in life – there were famous friends and artists aplenty. The house was richly decorated in William Morris prints, wallpaper, and carpets. I really liked the richness of the colours of his house but was disappointed that were not given more time to take it all in. Sadly, there isn’t a photograph of his richly wallpapered bathroom on the site.

Photos OPW from Glebe Gallery website.

I wondered if he was gay on the basis of his taste for lavish decorations and he didn’t have any girlfriends, or wives, just female friends – the snakeskin slippers under the bed, the flashy cravat collection also gave me a strong hint in that direction. Maybe there was a hidden struggle in Derek Hill’s life, after all. Homosexuality was illegal for much of his life in the UK and Ireland (it was decriminalized in the late 1960s and early 1990s respectively), and general social acceptance is a relatively recent phenomenon. There were creative men who risked prosecution, such as Francis Bacon and Cecil Beaton, by persuing sexual/and romantic relationships, but it was emotionally difficult for them and their lives were often fraught with guilt and shame. Others, like Hill, probably avoided the complications by becoming what was known as “confirmed batchelors.“

His jacket hanging in his wardrobe was very poignant as it still held the shape of his body, 19 years after his death. It reminded me of Dylan Thomas’s suit that hangs in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, in Wales. Derek Hill made his living from painting portraits of rich and important people. None of those paintings were here. His portraits of Donegal people are excellent. They were the best paintings in the house by far. The portrait of his head gardener (Below) caught the wiriness and strength of his physique well.

There is a great little coffee shop in a courtyard near the house. Its walls were also covered in original paintings, some by Derek Hill, others by the artists from Tory Island that he befriended and encouraged on his regular summer visit to the island.

Inside the Glebe House Coffeee Shop — Inside the Glebe House Coffee Shop

With more research that I discover that there was a lot of “emptiness and disappointment” for Derek Hill. The British artistic establishment and critics dismissed Hill’s landscapes as out of date because they were too representational. Welsh artist Kyffin William’s work was dismissed on similar grounds. British galleries refused to buy his portraits, although the best of them (see below) are powerful works.

Hill, Derek; Boxer Resting, Don Cockell; Birmingham Museums Trust; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/boxer-resting-don-cockell-34233

It is clear that Derek Hill loved Ireland and Donegal and its people, in particular. In 1981, Derek Hill donated Glebe House, its contents and the gardens to the people of Ireland. His studio and guesthouse were transformed into the Glebe Gallery displaying items from the Derek Hill Collection. He moved into a small cottage on the estate for the remaining 19 years of his life. It is clear that Ireland loved him back. In 1998 he was granted honorary Irish citizenship. in 1998, President McAleese told him that he had become “more Irish than the Irish”.

Hay Fever

Painting of a Stall at Stroud Farmers Market — Hay Fever

Here’s another footnote to last week’s post about the inspiration provided by markets. It’s the last, I promise. Sometimes, I feel the need to take a break from one sort of subject matter to paint another. I’ve painted quite a few landscapes lately and so I relished painting what I call “people portraits”, or paintings with people in them. Unfortunately, these sorts of paintings they don’t sell so easily as landscape paintings, I don’t know why. So painting people paintings is a bit of an indulgence. Saying that sometimes I need to change what I am painting to keep my style fresh. Too much of the same subject and my painting goes off a bit. It was the bottles that called to me. So many of them in the sunshine. I was attracted to the light and colours in this composition. Painting all those bottles was wonderful, slow, self-indulgent joy. It took quite a while and I swear that everything bottle is slightly wonky but it still works as a painting because its about light and colour, not perfect bottles. The stallholder looks slightly embarrassed to be sneezing, surrounded by a colourful forest of bottles. I liked the stallholder’s green top too as it nicely complemented the colours of the bottles. There’s also a green jacket on a chair back, to the left of her, repeating this theme. I simplified the composition, removing certain element that distracted from the bottles and shadows on the purple table cloths. I have a great deal of sympathy for the stallholder in the picture as I have developed hay fever this year. I may have had it before. I assumed that hay fever meant you sneezed and had runny eyes when you went near the grass. How little did I know! I had sneezing, itchy eyes, itchy throat and felt altogether rotten and very fatigued. It made me very ill. I thought I had a virus or a horrible cold. Eventually, my mother suggested it could be hay fever. I bought some over-the-counter antihistamines. Miracle Cure! So now, I consciously head for the coast to avoid the tree pollen, grass or whatever is out there that I am allergic to.

Posted on June 2, 2019June 11, 2020 by emma cownie — 4 Comments

Playing the Market

I love markets. I love outdoor markets and indoor markets alike. A busy market is fun to visit as a shopper, but even better for an artist. To be honest I often just look at the people and stalls and don’t buy a lot. It provides inspiration. There are lots of things to look at, the light, in particular, is what attracts me, whether it’s indoors or outside, there is always lots of natural light at a market. I also like the distracted people, and also the bright colours of the stalls and the people shopping or sitting outside at cafes (both in summer and winter).

Swansea has a cracking indoor market that was rebuilt after the original market was blitzed during the Second World War. It has a wonderful barrel-shaped roof. The light is a combination of natural light and artificial light. The light in the painting below is natural sunshine that was streaming in from the roof.

Painting of Swansea market — Knick Knack Attack (Swansea Indoor Market)

Outdoor markets are more variable, the rain can make them rather sad places to be in but in the sunshine, they are great fun. The Uplands, in Swansea, has a monthly market.

Painting of People at Uplands Market — Uplands Outdoor Market

Painting of Swansea woman — On a Mission

Painting of Welsh women — Double Trouble (Uplands Market)

I particularly like the dogs that come along too. They are usually on leads but also sitting with their owners at outdoors cafes at and near the markets. The strong winter shadows make for a dramatic composition.

Painting of Dog — Well Deserved Treat (Uplands)

I also like the little “unobserved” vignettes, such as these children playing with a typewriter. I like to imagine the conversation this smart-phone generation might be having about this relic from the last century.

Painting of Children with typewriter — What does it do? (Uplands Market)

There is a Victorian indoor Market in Cardiff too. It reminds me of a railway station, with its steel fixtures, supports, and arches, the huge glass, skylit, two-tone ceiling. They have a record shop upstairs and several cafes.

Painting of Cardiff Market — Overlooking Cardiff Market

Cardiff painting — “Weighing it Up” (Cardiff Indoor Market)

There is a fish stall by one of the two entrances, it gets natural light from the left side. This stall is particularly expansive, the fish and crabs are displayed in a generous display shelf. There is plenty to choose from. Again, it was the light that drew me to this composition. Although we cannot see the customer’s face, only his back, I am speculating on the conversation he is having with the fishmonger. I love that word “monger”. Its a wonderfully old-fashioned word (probably Anglo-Saxon) for someone who deals in a particular trade, there are others like an ironmonger, cheesemonger and more unsavory ones like fleshmonger, scaremonger and warmonger.

My parents live near Stroud, in the Cotswolds and I sometimes visit markets, there’s an indoor market most days of the week as well as an outdoor farmers market on Saturdays. I visited the market last Saturday.

Market at Stroud — Farmers’ Market, Stroud, England

Again, its the dogs that catch my eyes. There are lots in Stroud of different shapes and sizes. You can tell a lot about an area by its dogs. Fashions come and go in towns and cities like Swansea. Huskies used to be all the rage, then smaller dogs like French Bulldogs became popular, more recently cockerpoos are everywhere. When I visit Cirencester I see lots of dachshunds, in Stroud, there’s more a mix from larger lurchers, Jack Russells (my favorite dog), and very cute Chihuahua-mixes with Jack Russells. In Ireland, the towns also favor smaller dogs but in rural Donegal, it’s larger collies and black Labradors that are very popular. So as we drove the length of Ireland, I noticed that little Mitzie (our Dashund/Jack Russell cross) got admiring looks in Wexford but it was Biddy (our Collie cross) who was more popular in Donegal.

Again, it’s the “unobserved” that I am interested in. A dog on its own isn’t as interesting as one with its owners unless it’s looking “out of shot” at its owner. In “Just a Second” the dachshund is obviously hoping its owner is going to produce a treat from her bag. I doubt it somehow.

Two women and their dog painting — Table for Three SOLD

In “Table for three”, my most recent painting, the little pooch looks very much loved by its family, after all, as she has the best seat. I would not be surprised if she has been fed a biscuit or two or a slice of cake. Look, there is a knife, and a stack of plates under the coffee cup on the left, evidence of food eaten. There is a clearly comfortable vibe between the two women, whom I am guessing have been in a relationship for a long time. There are no smartphones to interrupt their revery in the sunshine. The woman on the left has difficulty walking as she has a walking stick in her hand. I love the rich red color of her hair, catching the sunshine. That color says to me I am still young at heart. It chimes with the red stripes of her partner’s top. This painting has caught a moment. It may an illusion. For all I know, they could be having a row, but I really don’t think so. I enjoy looking at the details in the picture and speculating and writing a story about them.

If you want to see more of my people and or animal paintings please click here.

Posted on March 21, 2019June 11, 2020 by emma cownie — 20 Comments

Home from Home

Painting of Donegal, Ireland — Over to Kincasslagh SOLD

I am winding down the social media for a while because we are leaving the UK to spend some time in our house in Burtonport, Donegal, Ireland. The internet will be available on a very limited basis so I won’t be able to post on here until mid-April. I will be checking my emails but I won’t be posting much, if anything, on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.

I have mixed feeling about the enforced “break” from social media. On the one hand, I hate the way how it sucks up all your spare time and energy and how FOMO (fear of missing out) has you checking updates. There’s always the fear that if you stop “spinning all the plates” that people will forget about you! However, I am certainly looking forward to reading books, listening to the radio (there’s no TV either) and sketching and painting for fun (not oils but watercolour sketches).

I am very excited/nervous about the whole thing because I am driving there and it’s a long, long way.

Please be aware that any artwork purchased after 25th March will only be shipped after 12th April.

IMG_20181103_100343971_HDR — My home in Donegal

Posted on March 17, 2019June 1, 2024 by emma cownie — 16 Comments

The Art of the Mailing List

I had been a professional artist for four years before I realized that I had been missing a really big trick. I wasn’t cultivating my mailing list. I had a small collection of email addresses that my website provided kindly collected for me, but I didn’t really do much with them. I didn’t do anything at all, in fact.

This was a serious mistake. I was avoiding working out how to use an automated mailing list provider because I had hadn’t had the time or energy to immerse myself into finding out about aspects of social media, which was to me “new” technology. Don’t laugh. I wasn’t until quite recently that I “got” Pinterest or Instagram.

Now, younger people are probably shaking their heads at this. My niece famously said that the mini ipad I had on loan from the school I was working for at the time was wasted on me. She was probably right. I didn’t have the time. I was either preparing lessons, marking or painting. In 2016 I left teaching and I dedicated a lot of time to finding out how online stuff worked (not just facebook and twitter). It took a lot of effort but it was worth it.

This was vital for taking control of my own marketing and developing long-term and (importantly) direct relationship with collectors. Online galleries may bring you one-off sales, but they don’t seem to be terribly good growing repeat customers. Yet, I knew from experience that relationships & friendships, I had developed via Facebook and Twiter, and increasingly on Instagram, encouraged art collectors to support my work on a regular basis.

How many times have you had someone tell you that they “love your work but can’t buy it right now?” The mailing list is a way in which you can keep those potential collectors in touch with what you are doing. Some collectors start off with small paintings and come back and buy larger ones. It’s also about trust. If fans get to know you through your work and your stories they will become emotionally invested in your continuing success. People buy from those they trust. Most importantly, for you, it is your list. It doesn’t belong to the online gallery, Facebook or Instagram.

Where to start? Collect names and email addresses – at craft-fairs, exhibitions, from people who have bought your work in the past. You do need their explicit permission to email them or else you are breaking EU GDPR anti-spam laws.

Sign up for online marketing platform – I use Mailchimp.com (it’s free for mailing list under 2,000 names). I find not find it easy to work out how to use it but I watch a lot of Youtube videos and read articles on Pinterest and I got there in the end. There are also others to choose from such as Aweber.com and Tinyletter.com. These sites also provide pop up/sign up forms that you can link to your website or blog.

You can offer free downloads of a catalog, book, or print to encourage sign-ups (not a colouring-in page).

It’s not about the hard sell. Subscribers want to hear your latest news, the inside story on life as an artist. I have to remind myself that not everyone uses facebook, twitter and instagram or follow my blog and my newsletters are often a summary of the sort of content that is published on those platforms. A fair bit of content is similar to what I blog about, but not exactly the same.

As with social media – be consistent. Send out your newsletter regularly, whether that means twice a year or twice a month.

Ideas for content

New Paintings

Recent Sales

Discount codes

Exhibitions (setting up, behind the scenes, opening night)

Photos of paintings in collectors’ homes

Commissions

Customer testimonials

Video

Work-in-Progress photographs (the “sneak peek”)

Remind people of your story “about me”, how I came to be an artist

New products – e.g. prints, greeting cards, tea-towels, online courses, ebooks

Encourage subscribers to follow you on other platforms

Inspirations – such as other artists or locations that inspire you

Revisit old work

Encourage subscribers to follow you on other platforms (as the content is not identical on Instagram or facebook).

Failures and challenges (hard though it can be to admit these, people like to see you overcome minor difficulties, you are human after all).

Review of Art products

Business tips for artists (quite a few artists sign up to artist’s newsletters)

Finally, remember not to put in too much. It’s not a newspaper. You want collectors to visit your website. It also needs to be visually appealing (canva.com is useful for this), have a consistent brand feel to you. You also need to proof-read it carefully!

Posted on March 12, 2019May 2, 2019 by emma cownie — 13 Comments

A footnote

Last night I received a lovely present from one of the pupils of Brynmill school who was inspired, after my talk with her class, to paint one of my paintings. I was absolutely charmed and delighted by this gift.

Nia told me in her accompanying note that “instead of paint, I used Sharpie (felt tip pen)”. What really tickled me is that she then added “when you came to my school your advice when doing art was to sketch it first and then continue”. She had followed this advice brilliantly. She’d had sketched the figures in pencil and then added colour in Sharpie pen.

I was really impressed that she had caught the shadows on the men’s jacket & coats. I liked her use of flat colour and the relationship between the figures. There was something “Hockneyesque” about her work! I hope she keeps on creating. An excellent painting from a budding young artist. Great to see!!