Art in Bloom

Thank you to everybody who came along to the Windsor Contemporary Art Fair at the weekend. It was a very lively show and it was good of the sun to show it’s face on Sunday. A very sad weekend for many people with the Remembrance Services happening all over the country and the two two minute silences on Friday and Sunday.

The weather is now well into Autumn and the colours have been stunning and will continue to be thanks to all the leaves that are still on the trees – inspiration for autumnal paintings. I was in Canada in October and I feel confident in saying that our colours rivalled theirs!

Next on my agenda is the newest event for Elephant Family. This promises to be great fun for children and adults alike – an Easter Egg Hunt happening in London in 2012. I have a design submitted and I just need to collect my egg. There are quite a few eggs in progress by other artists at the moment and as soon as mine is underway I shall get some photos up for you to see and give you more information. Until then….

We had a lovely time doing our Art Show in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

We have many thank you’s to pass on. Firstly to Marie Quintiliani for organising the whole event, you did it beautifully. Secondly to Amanda Valli for letting us use her lovely studio space. Thirdly to all the friends and family that helped out and last but not least to all of you who came along to see us we hope you had a good time.

I personally answered lots of questions about my techniques, from photographing flowers in the sun to creating the compositions and to coming up with the weird and wonderful names. It was lovely to meet people that were interested and I hope you all enjoyed it.

We’re very much looking forward to doing it again next year and meeting you all again.

The studio in full flower

Marie Quintiliani & Karen Hollis

Spring Fair is regarded as ‘the’ event for artists to get their work in front of Trade buyers, people who’s job it is to find the new images for retailers, galleries and card suppliers, to name but a few.

For a lone artist it’s feels like it should be quite a scary event compared to the friendliness of The Reading Contemporary Art Fair where people like to know where you live and how long you’ve been doing it and are you enjoying yourself!

However the people I met were lovely but businesslike and there were lots of opportunities available to discover new avenues for creativity. I met the lovely Kate Mawdsley and Phil who license Kate’s beautiful illustrations. Then there were the ladies from The Fine Art Trade Guild who were a mine of information and talked me into membership (pending) for all the right reasons. This was helped along by the guiding hand of Colin Ruffell who also took the stand to deliver one of the many informative seminars.

My immediate neighbours on the stand were fellow artist Helen Elliott and her daughter Chloe, whose Naive art is very strong and cheerful and goes under the bi-line of ‘happy pictures for happy peoples’. Also Alastair Howie whose intricately coloured architectural illustrations contain so much detail that you can be mesmerised by them for hours and also Gill Copeland who takes gorgeous images of Britains beaches. Then there was also Dave and Nigel and Liz and and many more whose knowledge was imparted over many hours between potential customers. To all of you a big thanks. It made it a very enjoyable, if exhausting, five days!

Art in Bloom at Spring Fair 2011

Art In Bloom in The Artists Quarter

Coming up on the last weekend in April is the Reading Contemporary Art Fair. This is the first time that this Art Fair has been to Reading, it’s more usual location being Windsor.

Art in Bloom has taken on quite a large stand, number 31, where we should have room for a full selection of framed prints as well as about 18 original oil paintings, all available to purchase.

Please come along and have a look and a chat. We’re always interested in peoples favourites and any suggestions of flowers for future paintings.

The show is open Saturday 24th & Sunday 25th April from 10.00 until 17.00 at The Rivermead Leisure Complex, Richfield Avenue, RG1 8EQ. If you think you might be able to make the Private View on Friday night then send me an email as I have a few tickets available.