I guess it’s inevitable so I will bow to it – what’s my year been like, art-wise?. What skills, highs, and lows, has this year brought me? And isn’t it fortunate that posts are time stamped so I only need look at blog and I don’t have to remember everything like you have to do at work for your review/self assessment?
I started the year painting for the Regina Rex exhibition at Artboy Gallery, finishing up the Mary II portrait with the oviraptor. By this stage I was very smooth and polished with the way I could do these portraits and I was over them. I found the other day a blocked in picture that I never took anywhere. Made me shudder. I’m so over doing these it’s funny!
Then of course in Feb I had the exhibition. I sold either 6 or 7 paintings which is pretty good for a hot week in Feb in a gallery that is hard to get to! I sold another of the pictures after that, and of course now they are going to King Henry’s art cafe, where I hope to move off a few more. They are very bulky to store and I have no idea how to sell them.
I made zero profit on that experience, btw. Once the gallery hire/drinks/advertising cards were paid for, I didn’t make any money at all; actually I’m still running at a loss when I include the tubes of paint and brushes and canvas, let alone being paid for the zillions of hours I put into working on them…. This is why I still work in testing for a financial institution. I kind of like being able to afford to buy the paint, etc. Painting is a rich person’s hobby. You have to be already in some way financially secure to paint.
The gallery experience is always stressful at the same time as good. It validates you as an artist. You get acclaim and it’s worth while doing – but it’s also expensive and lots of running around and the saddest thing is bringing unpurchased paintings home again. It’s less about the money to be honest but the Now What the Heck Do I Do With These!??
It was a direct decision after this year to start only working on smaller – and flatter, ie paper – pieces.
So what else did I do last year? It was very much a year fraught with health issues for me. I slipped three discs in my back in late 2014 and the back has been iffy on and off the whole time – it’s iffy RIGHT NOW. And by iffy I mean, it’s randomly painful and feels like it with ‘go out’ on me. Sometimes I can’t bend. I have arthritis in there and also scoliosis (curve that messes up the muscles). I also had the ongoing fatigue/tired issues of early perimenopause which has finally been helped by hormone replacement therapy, so I’m ending the year feeling like a human rather than a tired human.
I tried doing a bunch of things this year I’d never really done, to try and get better at things.
I spruced up some illustrations I’d done for a book I’ve written – I still have not sent that off anywhere for consideration. I have also been trying to get a (non art) book published and it’s been rejected about 8 times thus far, so I’ve kind of hit the wall there.
I became obsessed with the Ukulele for a bit. I’m still pretty crap at it because my focus is usally art rather than music, but it’s a cute instrument to play.
I started focusing on improving my landscapes. This was for a variety of reasons but really because I felt I needed some major improvement there. I did a lot of oils at first.
Then I started looking at egg tempera. I got a bunch of pigments and did the preperation of the boards. To this date I’ve only completed 1 painting in egg tempera, and half done another. It’s messy and time consuming, this is why. I should get back into it at least to finish my second picture!
I stared with pastel. I really like pastel, the down side is the messy factor and the fact you can’t touch the effing things when you’re done and you have to be uber careful with them.
My completed Egg Tempera – Ada Lovelace holding an xbox controller.
I didn’t do as many cartoony watercolours this year. Just lost the love for it for the time being.
CHICKENS! Though I may have got them last year, I’ve been inundated with eggs all year.
I got a new cat who has an anxiety issue but I adore her:
I discovered the joys of PuppySlugging people.
I did illustrations for The Lady Of Shallott, to get myself off my butt and do something arty after a slump
Scratch cards. I should really get some actual professional stuff for this, this was fun. The Rainbow stuff got a bit tiresome.
I finally started working out how to paint depth and trees in a landscape
Sometimes I need time out from being art creative so I go all craft instead. I decided it was time to get into model plane making, starting with a balsa wood kit of a spitfire (I have glue all over my fingers, it’s still in progress, and my goodness the instructions in those things are worse than the worst sewing pattern instructions ever!). I made a lot of sock monkeys (this is my Book of Mormon Monkey for someone who then turned into my manager). I’ve also been doing outdoor building things a lot -keeping up with gardening, redoing the fallen-down gates, etc.
I wrote a lot of prose this year too (very little of it poetry) and some stories (click on the link on this blog to AE Jeans writings for that), I worked out a lot of anger I had at various things this year. Big year for personal growth and learning to chill out. I then also got into gender politics and got on board with feminism politics, something that I always supported but understood very little of.
Other wins this year were getting solar panels installed, renovating my 6 footfish tank, buying a new car, getting a sideways leap to the Test Practice team at work, and starting to soundproof a drumming shed that I helped to assemble.
And then I finally started working out how to paint landscape/trees in watercolour that I didn’t want tot wipe my backside on – all my prior attempts were giant dismal piles of fail. Which is where my year finishes up, creatively.
Wonder what I will be doing next year. Starting the year on an exhibition is a good thing to be doing!
