Having just caught up with all my emails, the cat, the chickens and other jobs after a week in the South of France, I thought it would be a good idea to catch up with my blog. Now that I have incorporated my blog into my new website, the idea is to combine all news together so this could be a long post!
The picture here is a pastel of my three hens which I started as a demonstration at the Pastels Course. It's on Fisher 400 paper which I painted with a watercolour base before layering it up with soft pastel. I finished it in secret in my new studio, had it framed and presented it to my husband on his birthday in April - he loves his chicks!
Since then I have dragged him around the John Singer Sargent Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (Singer Sargent is one of my favourite portrait artists so it's wonderful to study his paint strokes up close as well as a selection of his sketches); the 'Inventing Impressionism' Exhibition just around the corner in the National Gallery (a fascinating collection of paintings owned by Durand-Ruel - a Parisian art dealer who championed the likes of Renoir, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley and Degas amongst others who had been rejected by the art establishment and who is credited with inventing the profession of the modern art dealer); a few of the Open Studios in the Chichester Art Trail before we headed to Arles and St. Remy in France where Vincent Van Gogh churned out hundreds of vibrant paintings in the short time he spent there before ending his life. The huge purple irises that he daubed onto his canvases in thick layers were out in full bloom everywhere and the quality of the light intensifies all colours. Sad that he only sold two paintings in his lifetime and never lived to see how valuable and widespread his work has become posthumously.