Printmakers' Exhibition Photos

Here are a few photos from our current show, our UK Printmakers' Exhibition. We have an extraordinary collection of prints for sale from some of the UK's foremost artists. I have so many favourites it would be difficult to choose between them.

PHILOMENA PRETSELL Very Large Jug, ANITA KLEIN Watching Gardeners' World Etching

HELEN FAY I.M. Gustav Etching, ELIZABETH BLACKADDER Still Life With Boxes Screenprint

ELIZABETH BLACKADDER Japanese Garden I Etching, NORMAN ACKROYD Pentland Firth Etching

CLARE MELINSKY Kitchen Cat Linocut, WEMYSS WARE Ginger Tabby Cats

MARTIN RIDGEWELL Blossom Etching ELIZABETH BLACKADDER Fred On Top Of The Cupboard Etching

Jill in the long room

Spring is on the way in the gallery garden...

Spring Fling Ceilidh

We are selling tickets for the 'Spring Fling' Ceilidh. Full price tickets cost £7.50 and concessions cost £6.50. Cash or Cheques made payable to 'Spring Fling Open Studios' only please.

Doors open at 7.30pm and the Ceilidh starts at 8pm on Saturday the 23rd of May in Castle Douglas Town Hall. Spring Fling takes place from the 23rd to the 25th of May and is a fantastic open studio event for the region's artists.

Printmakers' Opening and a Weekend of Art

Jill & Zoe at 'Spirit of Air' by Lizzie Farey

Our weekend started with a trip to Hazel Campbell's exhibition opening followed by the opening of Lizzie Farey's willow sculpture exhibition 'Spirit of Air' at Gracefield. It was lovely just to be able to enjoy the shows without any responsibilities and be able to catch up with friends.

Saturday was spent finishing hanging our Printmakers' Exhibition and worrying over all the finishing touches. We are delighted with the work in the show: it is definitely the celebration of UK printmaking that we intended it to be.

There was just time for a cup of tea with Barry and my cousin Joanna before the busy Private View this afternoon. People travelled from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cumbria to the opening and everyone seemed to enjoy the huge variety of different prints from so many talented Printmakers.

The red browser

Unpacking the browser

The run up to a new exhibition is always exciting, nerve wracking and hectic. We are constantly thinking about the composition of the show and worrying about the logistics of getting everything from the artists, who often live in far flung paces, and always seem to work right up to the very last minute. Everything is coming together nicely for this show but I still wake up worrying about how we are going to get it all exactly right before the Private View on Sunday.

Today we unpacked a very fetching red browser. We have a lot of new unframed work in the Printmakers' Exhibition and this browser looks really great in the front room, I wish we'd known about this company before we bought our other browsers.

As we wheeled the browser into place it looked as if Anita Klein's 'Lady with a Hedgehog' was peering down to get a closer look!

I've got a mammoth amount of labels to print so I'd better get started...

Lighting up your way

Electrician Kenny McBride fitting a sensor for the lights

This week we've been continuing the gallery improvements. Kenny McBride has been fitting new lighting in the back two exhibiting spaces. This means we can dispense of our huge 100w bulbs and go some way to reducing our carbon footprint. With this in mind we have fitted sensors to most of the lighting in the gallery. With five exhibiting spaces, even when the gallery is quite busy, customers are rarely in all the spaces at once... the sensors will mean that the lights only come on as people move into the rooms, very good for the environment, and we hope these changes will make economical sense too!

So, next time you visit the gallery the lights will come on as you make your way round the spaces.

Scraffito and Slip

'Birdie' by Hannah McAndrew

I had such an enjoyable afternoon today. Slipware potter Hannah McAndrew very generously let me have a go at decorating a couple of pots at her Barm Pottery. I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on the pots - I just wanted to have a go at decorating.

I loved the rhythm of of the mark making and the 'quiet mind' you get when you are totally absorbed in the process. I decorated one vase with slip patterns and made use of a few happy accidents when the slip nozzle 'burped' a couple of times.

On the second vase I did some scraffito red squirrels on a branch, inspired by the news that my cousin Amy has just got a job saving the diminishing Red Squirrel population in the North of England. Scraffito is a delicious process where you scrape though semi dry slip into the pot below. The design evolved from one squirrel, to three on a branch. I didn't want to stop and felt a bit sad when I realised the pot couldn't take any more decorating.

Thank you very much Hannah for letting me come round and spend such an enjoyable afternoon in your lovely pottery.

Z

What's to come...

Things are very busy in the gallery at the moment: we are in the throws of organising a big Printmakers' Exhibition which will open on March the 8th. The exhibition will be a wonderful celebration of original Printmaking in the UK. I am very excited about the work we have for the show and can't wait to see it all hung together. The graphic above is from the front page of our Private View cards and features some of the artists who will be exhibiting.

I am also working on a brand new web site which will offer online shopping and lots of information about the artists we represent.

Now you can see why the Blog has been a bit quiet over the past few days! There doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day. I have still had time to enjoy frosty walks with my dog Beano, the winter landscapes round here are spectacular.