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SYP Part 3

Publicity and Networking

The exhibition at the Ballroom Arts Courtyard Gallery in Aldeburgh is a joint exhibition between my self and my partner Linda Mayoux who has just finished her OCA degree in Visual Communications and is now awaiting the results from her final assessment. 

Linda has been studying the range of graphic processes that are included in the Vis-Com degree but has decided that for this exhibition she will be concentrating on her photography. For me this is a great benefit as it provides a contextual basis for my more abstract paintings. It has also been very useful as, although I’m reasonably happy working in Photoshop, she has access to other design programs such as InDesign and Illustrator. This means that If I develop any flyers etc. in Photoshop she is able to convert these to print-ready output. I have also now increased my own knowledge about such concepts as ‘bleed’, ‘crop marks’ ‘CMYK’ and other dark arts.

There are several types of publicity material that we need to create for the exhibition, the Gallery has asked for material to be sent to them a month before the exhibition opens as they will be including it in their publicity. They promote their exhibitions in a wide variety of local and national publications as well as their on-line outlets. 

As we were going to be staying at the Coastguard cottage in Shingle Street for a week in March we felt that creating a printed flyer that might be used for creating some local interest. I got in touch with the gallery and they were able to send me their logos to be included in publicity material and I have put together an A6 flyer. We decided that we would get a double-sided flyer with each of us taking one side. Enquiries to a local printer meant that we could upload the PDF file on-line and collect 100 flyers the next working day for £30.

The design for ‘my’ side of the flyer – the actual result was slightly different due to non-availability of all the Apple fonts in the PC version of In Design.

We will be working on a poster image for the exhibition that combines both our work in a single image for distribution to various outlets.

Update:

Having just returned from our stay at Shingle Street I can report that having the flyers with us proved very useful. I managed to make several very useful contacts within the local art scene and being able to hand out the flyers with the exhibition details on them was a plus.

I first visited the Artspace Gallery in Woodbridge which is like the Courtyard gallery at Ballroom Arts in that it can be hired by the week for exhibitions. The current exhibition is being staged by a collector and art dealer Julia Gooch and features a collection of paintings by East Anglian artists.

https://www.artw.co.uk/new-events/2023/3/16/julia-gooch

I picked a time when the gallery was empty of visitors and had a chat with Julia about the exhibition and was able to talk about my own work and leave a flyer and she seemed very keen to get along to our exhibition.

A second gallery in Woodbridge that I visited was Gallery East. 

https://www.galleryeast.co.uk

This gallery is run by Susie Turner and her partner Cathy Doll and represents many of the local and national artists. Chatting to Susie it turns out that they actually live in Shingle Street just a few doors away from where we were staying. Again, having the flyer meant that she said that she would definitely try and get to the exhibition.

The following day was if anything more successful as I had just received an invitation to a private view for the opening of the Spring Show at Caroline Wiseman’s Beach Lookout Art House. 

https://www.aldeburghbeachlookout.com

Caroline is a well-known art dealer and author working both in this country and in New York and the invitation was a golden opportunity to meet her and also have a good look around her collection which ranges from Andrew Marr to Matisse. 

On the way to Aldeburgh I also took the opportunity to call in at Snape Maltings and visit the Maltings Gallery.

The gallery always has several Maggi Hambling works for sale and I was able to talk to the person overseeing the gallery to clarify a copyright query that Linda had regarding one of Hambling’s works. I also happened to mention our upcoming exhibition and it turned out that the woman I was talking to was taking part in a group show at the Courtyard Gallery the week before our booking so she will definitely be visiting our show.

 When I arrived at the Art House Caroline was very welcoming (the fact that I’d RSVP’d to the invite definitely helped) and was keen to hear about my work and the exhibition. She also invited me to join their ‘Art Club’ which organises all sorts of events for artists and also promotes exhibitions etc. for its members (for example in the RA’s magazine listings). Present members include Peter Blake RA, Maggi Hambling, Anthony Horowitz and lots of other artists and writers.

On the way back to Shingle Street I also took the opportunity to call in at White House Farm in Glemham which for many years has staged the Alde Valley arts festival and is the home of Galloper-Sands fine art dealers.

https://www.galloper-sands.co.uk

Again I was made to feel very welcome and they were interested in our upcoming exhibition (another flyer usefully handed out!). 

All-in-all the week spent at Shingle Street has been very useful and lots of contacts made.

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SYP Part 3

Exhibition planning

In order to work out which paintings will fit on which wall I used Photoshop to generate scale drawings of the various walls of the gallery and placed scaled images of my paintings on them. This has been a tremendous help in visualising how things will look. I used the dimension plan as supplied by the gallery and labelled the different walls A to F.

Linda and I had discussed the layout and we decided to share the space equally with Linda taking one side and I taking the other. So ‘my’ space will be wall A, the right side of the doorway on wall B, the left side of wall C, wall D and the right side of the window on wall E.

Wall A
Wall B
Wall C
Wall D
Wall E

This was just my initial idea for the layout and this will change as I complete more works, in particular the paintings on wall C shown above may not feature in this exhibition.

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SYP Part 3

New works and re-works

Taking on board the feedback from my tutor I have been making some minor alterations to a couple of my shell paintings. Emma had commented that Shell Storm would benefit from the white lines being a little less overstated and the texturing in the central white and cream area worked particularly well. I agreed with her critical feedback and so I have just made some subtle changes, in particular creating a more textured feel to other parts of the image and also shaving down some of the white lines.

Shell Storm Acrylic on canvas (60 x 60 cm)
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The second painting that Emma commented on was the Shell Cloudscape done in oils on a 100 x 100 cm canvas. Again, I agreed with her comment that one particular portion of the image felt awkward, it had been bothering me as although it was a representation of the actual shell structure it made the painting feel clumsy. I therefore decided that a small change would be beneficial to the overall feel of the painting.

Shell Cloudscape Oil on canvas (100 x 100 cm)
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Most of my work using shells has been based on the inside patterns with their flowing lines made up of the thin strata of shell. However, the outer surface of the shells has a different structure that is made up of strong ridges that radiate out forming a protective shield. 

I thought it might be interesting to try working in a more textured way, and having had the opportunity to chat with St Ives artist Stephanie Sandercock while I was last in Cornwall, I decided to use some of her techniques involving the building up of surface texture with material and layering and sanding back acrylic layers on top.

I have been using wall tile adhesive to create the texture which dries to a hard surface when applied over well-gessoed canvas.

As a source image I used a close up shot of one of the shells:

I chose this portion of the shell as I liked the fan-shaped structure and the colour combination.

Working on a 60 x 60 cm canvas I built up the texture of the ridges and gullies:

I used liquid acrylics with an extender medium to allow me to work wet-in-wet and for the ‘gullies’ I first filled them with Payne’s Grey and then ran a bead of Titanium White along one edge before tilting the canvas to carefully let the white run into the still-wet grey.

The ridges were then worked and rubbed back to build up the right level of texturing:

Shield mixed media on canvas (60 x 60 cm)

The way in which I had run the white into the grey definitely seems to have increased the three-dimensionality of the painting. I might work on the ridges a bit more to get a greater variation in colour and tone.

As a follow up to Shield I used the same technique on another painting but this has not worked so well, probably due to the less interesting structure and the lack of diversity, and so this has been shelved for the time being,

Untitled mixed media on canvas (60 x 60 cm)

I have been working on possible layouts for the upcoming exhibition using scale drawings in photoshop and trying different arrangements of my artworks and it felt that things would benefit from a second large scale oil painting to give balance to the Cloudscape painting. With this in mind I have been working on a shell painting based on the inner surface pattern of an oyster shell.

What attracted me to this image was its ethereal feel, it reminds me of an image taken by the Hubble Telescope of the Eagle Nebula (an image often referred to as ‘The Pillars of Creation’). This idea set me fancifully thinking, whilst I was painting, about how the oyster spending its existence in the confines of its shell, might set about creating its own universe scattering stars, clouds, seas and mountains as if it were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, of even a god of creation.

Creation Oil on canvas (100 x 100 cm)

This will need a bit more detail work carrying out once it has dried a bit more but I like the way it is progressing.

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