UKCPS exhibition 2014

This year's exhibition is in the RBSA Gallery Birmingham (4 Brook Street, St. Paul's Square). I was so chuffed to have the 3 pieces of work that I entered, selected, especially considering this is my first year as a member and also my first as an entrant.  But the icing on the cake was getting to meet other members and being able to view their work in the flesh. It's never the same as photos online or in a catalogue! I am really thankful to those members that made me feel particularly welcome, and shared their experience of life as an artist /CP member with me. I still consider myself a bit of a rookie in the coloured pencil field, especially compared to some. It is not my main medium (indeed those of you who follow me here, will know that I use several, but personally, I consider oils and watercolours to be I suppose, what I prefer most, as well as occasional forages into mixed media and printmaking.) There is something so wonderful about the medium of coloured pencil though, and for me, what I love about it especially, is the ability to create depth and richness of colour, or to achieve fine detail, or quite the opposite: painterly, sketchy marks. Hopefully, things are beginning to change, and the UK gallery-going, art-loving public will begin to stop placing oils (as much as I love them myself) at the top of the hierarchy of media, with ignorance causing some people to unfortunately turn up their noses at watercolours and below that, I suspect, CP. Is it our fond, childhood memories of scribbling with Crayola that underpin that stigma? The work on show here should play testament to the strengths of CP as a medium , and I feel honoured to be a part of that.

The exhibition runs until May 10th, with demonstrations by highly talented CP artists, including Malcolm Cudmore, who I had the pleasure of meeting yesterday. It is great to be able to put a real face to a name, especially someone whose work I hold in high regard and whose articles I have read in art magazines. If you're in Birmingham, why not have a look? It's also within walking distance from the BMAG where I spent more than three hours soaking up all the Pre-Raphaelite works on show!! I love them! (I would have stayed longer, but I felt guilty that my husband was babysitting for most of the day.) So, when a Facebook artist friend, told me that the Birmingham Gallery had a huge body of their work, I couldn't wait! And a real bonus was the surprise exhibition (it was a surprise for me, at least) of Grayson Perry's famous tapestries:The Vanity of Small Differences. Some very interesting observations on British culture and class.  For me, colourful, quirky, humorous and thought-provoking all at the same time. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet.  Unfortunately, they had sold out of books, and I had to settle for a few postcards instead. All in all, I felt like a child in a sweet shop. It has been so long since I was able to enjoy an art gallery on my own, I savoured every moment. Here I am looking slightly sheepish beside one of my drawings, Alas y Raices, (Wings and Roots) and below, with fellow UKCPS member, Judith Heilbronn-Crown at last night's private view at the RBSA.

We spent the whole of today travelling back and were up at 5am to make the boat from Cairnryan to Belfast in good time.  I came home feeling revived from my short familystay in Keswick, and soaking up the art on offer in Birmingham. 

I have paintings to do, and my head is brimming with ideas for others, but it`s back to the grind of laundry, school lunches, trying to get my little one out of pull-ups, finally!! a huge supermarket shop to do (maybe, I shall do it online?) and the dog to pick up from the kennels in the morning after the school run.  Being a fulltime mother, housewife and trying to make a living as an artist: anyone written a self-help on that yet?