Monday, August 18, 2008

Artist in Residence at Nature In Art

After a couple of weeks of preparation – printing and packing my greetings cards, flyers, labels and stuff… I’m setting off for Nature In Art in Glos today. Although this wonderful place is not open to the public on Mondays; artists’ in residence usually set up their work and arrange the studio to suit their needs on this day, so that they are ready for the visitors on the Tuesday morning.

Again this year I shall be doing my 6-day stint with my very good friend and fellow artist Julie Askew. During the week we are put up in a lovely farmhouse B&B about 3 miles away, which I always look forward to staying in. I kind of look upon this week as a bit of a holiday… well, more like a busman’s holiday really. I shall be painting every day, intermingled with a lot of chat to the visitors and my friend of course, but the general atmosphere of both Nature In Art and the B&B is very relaxed and calming.

The plan is to get on with the elephant painting I am in the middle of. I had some very favourable reaction to it when I was a stand-in artist in res last Friday at the same place. It is of a group of elephants walking towards the viewer in a long postbox format composition, set in Amboseli, Kenya.

I saw the scene in 1999 and took about 15 mins worth of video of the ‘action’, because at the time I knew I wanted to paint it someday. Now that day has finally arrived and it’s taking me right back to that time and place, each time I work on it. What a lovely feeling that is. I doubt I will finish the whole painting, but it would be really nice if I could get all the ellies painted in this week…. that is my target. I shall post a piccie soon of it to show you, hopefully when there’s more of it to see.

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