2022 is here

 Happy New Year!

Having heat in my garage studio is making a world of difference to my art practice. In previous years it's been several months into the new year before my creative spirit has felt inclined to come out of hibernation but this year I just have to pack up my thermos of coffee or tea and step into my space. 

I am opting to participate in a couple of creative online challenges in order to keep to my big goal of putting my art out into public space. To do that I also followed through on starting an IG account in my own name slangdon_art. I'll still keep my private account but this one is public facing. 

I posted one of my Palette Play pieces as my initial post to test out how posting works from my phone (I usually prefer to do things from my desktop PC) and everything went okay. I've since googled to figure out how to do line breaks so I can avoid the dreaded big wall of text for when I get wordy - and I know I will LOL. 

I'm participating in 21 days in my art world hosted by Tara Leaver for which there are daily prompts, the first being to post a favourite painting. So hard to choose but I opted for Emmanuel and then I got really techy by posting 4 images showing his evolution from discard palette canvas to finished piece. Thankfully it all was fairly intuitive. Up next is 'lesson learned'.

I've also opted to join in on Bethany Kohrt's January Drawing Club, again with daily prompts - yesterday's was an article of clothing that you have worn recently. My new two toned grey slouchy fleece hat fit the bill perfectly. 

These both can seamlessly fit into my own 100 day project that I'm doing from January 3 - April 13 which involves drawing daily, as that is an area that I need to strengthen by upping my practice. Posting daily for the duration of Tara's challenge also gives me the opportunity to become more comfortable with the platform and I can see how much time it involves. I doubt I will continue daily after that but I would like to settle into 2-4 times per week to build a following of a sort. We'll see - it is such a big unknown right now.

Almost forgot to document the biggest news though - 2 of my three paintings sold at the Westland Gallery Square Foot show!!! To say I'm head over heels about that is putting it mildly. Gale Force and Tufted Joy have gone on to new homes, I don't know where, so I'm also feeling an unfamiliar twinge of something about that. But that's okay, I'm happy to get used to it LOL. 

I'm So Excited

... and I truly can't hide it!

Image (c) Westland Gallery Square Foot Show

Westland Gallery has posted pictures to their Facebook page of the 2021 Square Foot Show hanging and I was able to see two of my pieces hanging. It all feels a bit surreal still to be honest. My inner child is absolutely squealing right now LOL! 

 

A Milestone Day

 Major excitement for me today as it was my drop off day for the Square Foot Show at Westland Gallery in Wortley Village. This goal has been several months in the planning and I'm quite chuffed with myself for having followed through. Wouldn't have foreseen doing this a year ago LOL. 

Lots of new experiences for me in bringing pieces forward for sale - applying hanging hardware, applying a protective finish, labelling and signing each piece. I decided to go with spray varnish for the canvas piece and then cold wax for the two pieces on wood panel. As far as a signature goes I finally settled on putting my initials in one lower corner and then full signature on the back. For the non representational pieces I don't want to choose for the purchaser which way to hang it. As the painter I certainly have a sense of which way it goes but once it's out of my hands it should be up to the buyer to choose for themselves and I don't want my signature to determine that necessarily.

Looking at them here I see I also need to practice my photography skills, as you can hardly see the hints of red that live in Gale Force. 

    

     Gale Force - mixed media          Adrift - mixed media                 Tufted Joy - mixed media

       on 12 x 12 wood panel              on 12 x 12 canvas                    on 12 x 12 wood panel

Tufted Joy is also serving as my personal xmas card this year, so spoiler alert for those on my card list LOL. It was painted from a reference photo belonging to Mary Villazon , with permission, as we are both members of the Photos for Artists facebook group. 

The Square Foot Show  runs November 24 - December 30, 2021.

Up next - my winter project is to build a proper website for my artwork and I'm hoping to be able to link this blog to it at some point. Lots more learning ahead!