Monday 23 March 2009

Latest Commissions


Here are my latest two commissions, Paris at the top and Bea below. Paris was a fun commission to do due to the different style, the inspiration taken from a previous painting of mine. The owner had a fabulous photo of the beautiful Paris cantering across her field and wanted to recreate this with a more contemporary background.

Bea's owner had previously commissioned me to do a painting of a friend's horse so after helping me at that photo shoot, she was able to get some fabulous photos. Old age sadly took over and Bea is no longer with us but this painting will hopefully be a wonderful tribute for years to come.

Thursday 19 March 2009

Equestrienne

Well, after a bit of a break from my art it was back with a bang last week as it was the Equestrienne exhibition that was held by myself and 5 other equestrian artists in Cheltenham. The Private View on the Wednesday night was quieter than we had anticipated as we invited a lot of people but on talking to people from Cheltenham, the locals tend to stay indoors during the Gold Cup racing festival and the racegoers tend to head straight to the pub after the races. Still, it wasn't a bad attendance, with Desi Dillingham, the president of the British Horse Society opening it for us. Because we rented the gallery space for the week, we had to be in attendance and it was great meeting the customers and hearing everyone's thoughts. Not many originals were sold but I did sell a few prints and cards which is always a bonus. We're hoping to hold other exhibitions together and our next venture might be at the racecourse for The Open in November so I need to work on producing more racing paintings this year to target the right audience. All our art was very different from eachother but worked extremely well together and we received many complimentary comments throughout the week. I look forward to our next exhibition together and hope to see you there!

Monday 2 March 2009

Sad news

Very sadly my dad died on Saturday night. He'd been ill for several years with dementia and at Christmas had had problems with some new medication so we thought the year would be a tough one for him. Just over a month ago he ended up in hospital with what was first thought to be a urinary infection but later turned out to be cancer. By this time he hadn't eaten much for a few weeks, was very weak and because of the dementia, unaware as to what was going on so he didn't suffer too much during his last weeks. My mum and I were with him when he died and see it as a release for him as he'd been so ill without much quality of life. We prefer to celebrate his life and remember him as he was before the illness so look positively at what has happened. Rest in peace Dad.