It has been a very busy Summer here, with preparations for Perthshire Open Studios and Bristol Affordable Art Fair. We had a great turnout at Stanley Village Hall for POS, surpassing our figures last year to 401 visitors! Being a part of Stanley Artists is proving to be a great move, our group is very supportive and community-spirited, which is most welcome when you predominantly work in isolation.
Now I get a bit of a breather, allowing for the studio to have a long-awaited redecoration. Photos to follow 🙂
I’ve just submitted work to two open submission exhibitions, something that I haven’t done for a while, so fingers crossed for a favourable outcome there. As any other artist will know (who submits work to these types of exhibitions), you have to become pretty thick-skinned when it comes to your artwork being rejected. Dealing with rejection is just about an everyday occurrence to a professional artist, in some form, whether a passing comment, an exhibition committee saying ‘no thanks’ or a gallery not getting back to you at all.
And some people wonder what all my spiritual/self-development stuff is all about… Dealing with the challenges of life, better than I could have otherwise, of course! Being a self-employed artist can be isolating and somewhat depressing, at worst, but very rewarding when the successes do come, and that is a matter of mindset, how you respond to events that happen. I’m still learning, but have a great teacher – see www.derekoneill.com, if you’re interested.
So, getting back to my update… Once the studio is all shiny and white, with better lighting, I will be preparing for a couple of exhibitions next year, including a solo show at the Scottish Natural Heritage‘s Battleby Conference Centre in Perthshire. This is a fantastic, large and open space, which will take some very large paintings, so I’m taking the opportunity to produce a scale of work that I haven’t been able to for many years. I’ll be focussing on native plant species, to keep with the ethos of the organisation. I’m excited about it all!
Our Stanley Artists group will be exhibiting together at Birnam Arts Institute in the Summer next year too, and a few of us are submitting work to their Christmas show, which opens on 2nd December this year. We hope that you can make it along to both exhibitions, to see the great work that we all produce.
Until the next post.
Best wishes,
Lynsey