It was great to see, and welcome, so many visitors to our  annual three-day, August Bank Holiday exhibition. The lovely, sunny, warm, dry weather helped  visitor numbers return to somewhere close to pre-Covid levels, both to Lacock village itself and, as a consequence, to our exhibition.  We'd like to say a huge 'thank you' to everyone who visited our exhibition over the weekend, including local people, those on a day out with their families, and visitors from further afield in the UK and abroad. As ever, in addition to human visitors, it was a pleasure to also welcome a variety of well-behaved four legged friends!
A fun, friendly atmosphere prevailed and we are most appreciative of the many compliments we received about the standard of art on display.
Thanks to all members who supported the exhibition, whether by exhibiting and/or assisting in its set-up and close-down. 

One serendipitous moment stands out from the exhibition. Fred Taylor, one of our member artists, often paints superb, highly detailed, realistic paintings of locomotives and his painting of the 'Penrice Castle' train was on display at our August exhibition. This train was built in June 1949 by the Swindon Works (GWR/British Railways) and retired from service in February 1965.
By co-incidence, Graham Cripps and his daughter visited our exhibition on Sunday, out on a day-trip from Swindon. It transpires that not only did Graham recognise the Penrice Castle straight away, he actually worked on the train as a fireman for seven years in the 1950s! It was touching to see how moved Graham was by the memories that Fred's painting evoked for him and was a tribute to the quality of Fred's work.  He then saw one of Fred's prints of another train - and he had also worked on that one too! Special thanks to Graham for letting us include this in our report. 
Photo of Graham Cripps courtesy of Greame McFaull.

It's great to report that £2,283 worth of artworks were bought over the three day exhibition, just over double the amount of sales achieved from recent exhibitions earlier this year and in 2021. We sold a total of 39 pieces of art and 94 greetings cards, also a significant increase. Our thanks to everyone  by so generously bought a painting or card in support of our art group. 

Our fun 'visitors' vote' again featured throughout the exhibition and proved popular. Visitors voted for their favourite painting on display; this is just for fun, there is no prize, however, the artist whose painting receives the highest number of votes always appreciates the accolade.
In total, 241 visitors cast a vote, and 106 paintings received a vote. 
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And the winner, with 11 votes, is ... 
"Summer Evening Breeze" (shown below) by Kay Smith (acrylics). Congratulations Kay!
A close runner up with 10 votes was "Bluebell Woods" by Maggie (aka Tracy Warne), followed by Mike Wilson's "Sorting the Catch" , in hot pursuit with nine votes. 

Tip for art group members on artwork transportation
Large, framed paintings can be heavy to transport to exhibitions and may be vulnerable to damage if they are not wrapped and packed carefully. Karen Road, a LAG member, highly recommends using "Stiffy Bags" (please, no jokes people), a lightweight, bag designed specifically to protect art during transportation. You can find out all about them here.

And finally ...
​As one Lacock Art Group exhibition closes, the next one looms on the horizon.
To find out when our next exhibition takes place, please visit our events page; we will release more information about it nearer the time.
Thank you.

​This annual festival follows swiftly after our exhibition. Organised by the Festival Committee with support from the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust and the Wiltshire Youth Canoe Club, this is the 7th year of the Food and River Festival. The 2-day late summer event takes place in the heart of Melksham, Wiltshire.

​The Festival seeks to provide a platform for local food and drink producers, community groups, local entrepreneurs and start-up businesses. A range of activities, stalls and attractions take place in the park and on the river that will appeal to visitors of all ages on both Festival days.
 
One of Lacock Art Group’s members, Chris Crosby, has a stall at the Festival where her own art will be on sale, together with some beautiful stained glass pieces created by her daughter-in-law. If you’re in the area over the Festival weekend please drop in and say hello to Chris and her team.
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Entry is FREE! After browsing the stalls and indulging in some retail therapy, you can relax and enjoy al fresco locally produced food and drink, while listening to live music and watching the boats on the river.
 
To find out more about the festival:
Email the organisers at info@melkshamfoodandriverfestival.co.uk.

Alternatively look them up on Facebook  or Instagram.

By Elspeth Wales

Acrylic fine artist, Colin Brown, gave an insightful demonstration of his artistic process and technique to members of Lacock Art Group and visiting guests towards the end of July.

He told the audience about his professional background and how, after completing a four year art course at Canterbury College of Art, he worked for 24 years as an illustrator-visualiser for advertising, design, and 3D agencies in Bath, Bristol, London and Europe. He draws a great deal on his visualization experience to inform the painting technique he uses today.

Colin mainly paints street scenes from locations around the world, although has also branched out into painting racehorses for commissions from Cheltenham Racecourse. Whatever the subject, he always focuses on creating atmosphere and light, and bringing movement into his paintings, achieved through his dynamic style. 

You can see the influence of the Impressionist movement in his own style – free and loose, and unconstrained by detail. Claude Monet is one of Colin’s biggest inspirations, particularly the way Monet applied paint in single strokes of colour.

Colin uses photos as the base reference for his paintings but explained that he makes up a lot of the content too – another nod to his past experience as a visualiser. It was interesting to see how he paints upside down, which is a technique that helps the brain to simplify the image in front of you by focusing on looking at the shapes and angles. Colin paints upside down from start to finish but at the demonstration he turned the painting the right way up for the benefit of the audience! 

Useful tips
One of the tips he gave was to apply a pink ground to the canvas, which helps to exaggerate the brush strokes painted on top of the ground. The placement and direction of his brush strokes are random, decided in the moment.
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For the most part Colin uses synthetic flat brushes, switching to round brushes for more detailed sections of a painting, as shown in the image above. It’s important to keep the paint fresh while you paint and he finds that synthetic brushes cope better with the paint. He uses a metal ruler as a guide for painting straight lines, which worked well.​

​There is never a focal point in his paintings; he believes it’s the overall value that’s important.

To create darks he uses dark purple or dark green instead of black, and always puts some green into a sky to achieve a more realistic turquoise sky colour. And he paints the canvas going round in circles, layer upon layer.
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People attending were fully engaged in the demonstration and several asked some great questions, which Colin was happy to answer. It was also good to see a couple of prospective members, who are on our membership waiting list, attend the event. On the night we revived the use of a projector and big screen, placed on the stage, so that people at the back of the room could see.  After a couple of false starts this worked very well in the end! 

Excellent feedback
We received some great feedback afterwards from attendees about Colin’s demonstration, who found it highly informative as well as good fun. Our thanks go to Colin for making it so interesting and also for taking the time to chat to people in the interval.
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Above all, it was fascinating to watch Colin’s painting evolve in stages on the canvas, from upside down blocks of shape and angles, the emergence of more detail as he applied colour, to the finished painting that evokes the hustle, bustle and movement of a busy street market in Norwich.

You can find out more about Colin and his work on the Buckingham Fine Art website.