On behalf of Lacock Art Group its chair, Joy Tickell, went back to school in early December to present a voucher for £175 to Lacock Primary School to spend on art materials.
 
The money was raised from the profits made at the Group’s exhibition in November, which was held at Lacock Village Hall, where members of the art group also meet on Thursday nights to draw, paint and learn techniques from one another. The voucher is redeemable at Artway in Melksham and given by the members of Lacock Art Group as a gesture of support for the local community.
 
Joy presented the voucher to two children from the ‘school council’ during the school’s celebration assembly when children were presented with certificates in recognition for a range of achievements and accomplishments, such as good performance and being helpful.

Joy said: “I explained a little about LAG, the exhibitions we hold and how that, as we had enough money in our bank account, we could donate the profit of our November exhibition to their school. It was a lovely occasion. The children were amazed and appreciative of the amount we donated, and it was a pleasure for Lacock Art Group to be able to make this donation. I hope this will also encourage some budding junior artists!”
 
In fact, two of the children excitedly declared their knowledge of Lacock Art Group via their Nan (Karen McGreevy) and Mum (Victoria Cleverley), who are both current members of the Group and skilled artists in their own right.
 
Our thanks go to personnel at Artway who were very helpful in producing an A4 sized voucher for Joy to present to the children (above).

Cash prizes to be won!
This year’s Oexmann Art Competition and Exhibition, organised by Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, starts accepting entries on 22 November until 26 November. A panel of judges, comprising three experienced, well-known artists, will select the winners on 30 November, with cash prizes of £500 and £300 awarded to the first and second placed winning adult entries. 
The Competition aims to encourage and promote Wiltshire artists of all ages and is open to anyone who was born or lives in the county. Note that the organisers may ask prize-winners for proof of birthplace or residence.
You can choose any subject matter for your entries, which must be in 2D form i.e. painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, but photography and computer generated artworks are not acceptable. All entries must be original works. The competition judges will not accept work that artists have copied or plagiarised. 
​An exhibition of the winning art and other selected entries takes place at the Wiltshire Museum from 17 December 2022 to 18 February 2023. 
Entrants may submit up to three entries each, but please be aware that a strict picture size limit is in place – frames must not exceed 80cm x 60cm, landscape or portrait orientation, in order to allow the maximum number of entries to be displayed in the Museum. Entry costs £3.50 per picture for the over-18 category.

Entry form and criteria
To enter you need to complete the entry form that’s available to download from the Wiltshire Museum’s website. The entry form also gives details about the full entry criteria. You have to print and complete both sides of the form and take it with you when you deliver your entries, which you can do during the usual working hours from Tuesday 22 – Saturday 26 November, 2022. To check the opening times please go to Museum’s visitors’ web page. 

If you have any queries about entry please contact the Competition Manager, Heather Ault, on 01380 727369 or email her at oexmann@wiltshiremuseum.org.uk 

Good luck to anyone who enters!

Calne’s annual Music and Arts Festival (CMAF), providing entertainment for local people and showcasing local musical and artistic talent, runs from 7-16 October. An extensive range of events take place throughout the 10-day Festival so there is sure to be something that appeals to everyone.

An open art exhibition is the festival’s centrepiece, open to the public from Saturday 8 October to Sunday 16 October. The exhibition at Marden House in Calne presents hundreds of artworks from beginners to internationally renowned artists with a local connection. All art displayed is for sale. Please check the CMAF website programme for the exhibition's opening times as they vary at weekends and weekdays; you can also book tickets for various events on its site. This weekend the exhibition is open from 10am to 4pm on Saturday 8 October and from 10am-2pm, and 4pm-5pm on Sunday 9 October.

A few of our members are exhibiting this year so, if you’re able to, please visit the exhibition and show your support. 

Festival event: meet the artist – Chris Dunn
A ‘meet the artist’ talk featuring local, acclaimed illustrator Chris Dunn in conversation with Genevieve Sioka (the Festival’s exhibition co-ordinator) takes place on Saturday 15 October from 10am-12pm. Chris, who is an expert watercolourist, will be answering questions and signing books. The talk is free but if you'd like to attend  please book tickets for it on the CMAF website.
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You can also see some artworks by Chris on display at a separate, free, exhibition, which features his children's book illustrations, taking place at Calne Heritage Centre, SN11 0SQ. Open from 10am - 4pm, Wednesday - Saturday, 5th-29th October (closed on Sundays), the show features mainly prints of his watercolour illustrations for 'The Wind in the Willows', however, some of his original paintings are on display and there will be plenty of cards and books to look at too.

Other Calne Music and Arts Festival events
‘Drink and draw’ at the Piggy Bank Micropub is always a popular event during the Festival. This sounds like a fun evening – no artistic talent needed, just oodles of enthusiasm – so if you like to draw and have a drink join this event at the Piggy Bank, Calne on Monday 10 October at 7pm – again, you can book tickets on the CMAF website.

Numerous musical events take place as part of the Festival including performances by Opera Anywhwere, The Serenata Guitar Trio, The Yehudi Menuhin School, the Kassia Trio, jazz duo Kit Hawes and Aaron Catlow, the Calne Singers performing ‘Songs from the Shows’, sea shanty singers the Roaring Trowmen, Tim Hughes takes you through ‘120 years of the Blues’ and a piano recital by accomplished accompanist and chamber musician Helen Davies.

Local schools are taking part too: 17 year old Royal Wootten Bassett Academy student, Louis Stephenson, gives a piano recital, music scholars from Marlborough College perform a lunchtime recital, music scholars of St Mary’s School, Calne, perform on a variety of instruments, primary schools in and around Calne present ‘Songs from Disney’, and the Kingsbury Green Academy Music Department give a late evening concert.

To book your tickets for any of the Festival events please visit its website.

In other news: solo show by Catherine Beale - 'home ground' at The Packhorse, Bath
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Local watercolour artist, Catherine Beale, is staging an exhibition of new works inspired by her home ground - the villages and valleys around The Packhorse pub in South Stoke, Bath BA2 7DU. For this exhibition Catherine brings together a collection of rich watercolours celebrating the area, drawing on sunlight effects, quiet spaces and trees that mark time passing.

Exhibition dates:                                 
Opening night on Thursday 20 October from 5pm – 10pm.
Friday 21 October – coffee and demo with the artist at 11am. Exhibition open until 11pm.
Saturday 22 October – open from 12 noon to 11pm.
Final day Sunday 23 October – 12 noon to 6pm.

NB Catherine is also giving a demonstration to Lacock Art Group on Thursday 24 November. We will give more information about this in a future blog post.

Lawrence Art Society's exhibition returns to Devizes Town Hall
29 September to 1 October 2022

At the end of this month the major, three-day, annual exhibition held by our friends at the Lawrence Art Society takes place. Last year 250 artworks were exhibited with a total 'display' value of £50,000 which demonstrates how significant an undertaking it is to stage such an event. This year's exhibition will feature an extensive range of paintings in various styles, media and subject matter. 

Please do your best to support this exhibition by visiting it and/or telling your family and friends about it!

Entry to the exhibition in Devizes is free; it's open from 9.30am-5.30pm each day, from Thursday 29 September to Saturday 1 October. Details are on the poster below, or more information is available on the Society's website. 

Calling all artists ... the 14th Annual Pound Arts Open is back!
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Corsham-based Pound Arts has announced the submission dates for entries to its forthcoming exhibition as 9am on Friday 16 September until midday on Friday 4 November, 2022. 

This is the largest exhibition of the year at Pound Arts and exhibitors have the chance to win one of three fantastic cash prizes (including £250 from Corsham Town Council and £200 from Right Angle Picture Framing, as well as the opportunity to win a solo exhibition at Pound Arts! Brief details are below with more information about criteria and how to enter available on the Pound Arts website here. 

Dates of the exhibition itself are yet to be announced.

Good luck to everyone who submits an entry, especially members of Lacock Art Group! Please let the Committee know how you get on.   

​Attention oil painters: limited opportunity to obtain free PDF of Ted Spurgeon's book "The Living Craft"
If you are an oil painter who enjoys making your own mediums this book is a 'must have'. The current edition of Ted's book (edition 14), which is all about the creative process associated with oil painting,  has now completely sold out so he is offering the PDF for free. He has spent many years exploring historic oil painting materials and methods and his book documents his exploration of ways of refining oil and creating mediums that are based on Old Master techniques.

For a limited period - until the end of October - you can download a free PDF of the 500-page book. Given the size it may take some time to download! It comes highly recommended by one of our members who has followed its guidance and already made her own cold wax and will be having a go at making 'putty'! 

Take a look at Ted Spurgeon's website to find out more about the artist and his book which can be downloaded here.

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.

Dear Members,
Natural attrition of our membership has meant a number of new members have joined LAG in the first half of 2022; I believe this small turnover is healthy and keeps our group dynamic. A warm welcome to those of you who have joined us recently and I hope you enjoy being part of the group! If you haven’t already done so do make sure you familiarise yourself with our website, which was completely re-vamped last autumn and re-launched in November 2021.

As a member you have your own gallery space to use on our website so please take advantage of this facility if you haven’t already. Please send up to six photos initially (remember to give each one a title) of the paintings you want to display in your personal online gallery to Elspeth Wales at lacockartgroup21@gmail.com

You will have noticed the absence of a newsletter recently, which is because your committee decided that a monthly newsletter was too frequent. We agreed to publish a newsletter on roughly a quarterly basis, after a demo and/or an exhibition. A less frequent newsletter will allow for more and improved content, and we’re mindful that people can quickly suffer email overload with content dropping into their inboxes on a daily basis. 
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Additionally, Elspeth has been configuring the email marketing tool, Mailchimp, to distribute news items automatically (including newsletters) that we post on our website blog page. We can also use Mailchimp to email out other content relevant to LAG. The overall goal is to communicate to members from the Lacock Art Group email address, creating a consistent approach, rather than sending emails from various personal email addresses. Using Mailchimp also allows us to create GDPR compliant mailing lists easily. Subscribers will receive news updates from LAG, and we are aiming to broaden our audience of non-members who may be interested in signing up to our mailing list to receive news about upcoming demos, exhibitions and other activities. You will notice there is now a ‘subscribe’ button on our news/blog website page – if you know of anyone who might like to subscribe to receive our news please point them to that page.

Our second exhibition of the year took place over the Jubilee weekend on 4-5 June. The weather was not particularly kind to us and, with Thursday and Friday being holidays, the village seemed eerily quiet. That said, over £1,000 of sales were achieved, so proceeds easily covered our costs. My thanks go to those who volunteered their time to help set up, man the desk, steward and take down the stands. Many thanks in particular to Linda Ridler who provided the van to take the boards to Ken Baldy’s house ready for a professional painter to give them a fresh coat of paint. We received numerous suggestions for improvements to the exhibition from members, which we’ll be assessing.

​The re-instatement of “vote for your favourite painting” slips and the striking floral voting box were well received by visitors. Children in particular took part and offered a welcome distraction to their parents.

I know you’ve all been waiting to know the results so here they are: 
190 votes were cast in total. 82 different paintings received a vote.
And the winning painting, with eight votes, was ‘Bengal Kitty’ by Karen McGreevy. Congratulations Karen!

​On 19 May Mike Skidmore demonstrated his technique of painting a portrait using oils. Mike’s delivery was amusing and informative and made it look easy! He gave us numerous good tips on equipment, one particularly good example that I liked was the use of foil “Lazy Susan plates” to organise your oil paints, with the base flesh tone being in the middle well and the other tones in the wells around it. A big 'thank you' to Mike for such an enjoyable evening.

Several non-members, mostly from Box Art Group, attended the demo, and it was great to welcome them. Overall the feedback was very positive. There were some comments about visibility, so we are reviewing our decision to stop the use of the cameras/projector for demos and work is in progress. We will not make recordings of demos, however, because the quality of the end product is simply not something we would be happy to post online; the skills or time to perform editing do not exist within the membership. Additionally, some artists now do not want their demos to be recorded unless they are paid a higher fee.
Here are a few images taken at the demo: Mike Skidmore; his finished oil painting; and the audience.

Finally, a reminder for you to check out forthcoming activities on the events page of our website.
​Thank you.

Original art work, prints and cards by more than 30 locally based amateur and semi-professional artists on display.
Where: Lacock Village Hall
When: Saturday 4 June and Sunday 5 June 2022.
Doors open at 10.00am daily and close at 5.00pm.  Free entry.

Everyone's welcome - adults, children and pets!

​Our recent exhibition over the weekend 19-20 February in Lacock Village Hall coincided with very bad, stormy weather, which we thought may deter people from getting out and about. The quality of the work displayed by our members was outstanding and drew numerous very positive comments from visitors. I must say, the standard of members' work seems to get better and better.

In spite of the bad weather we sold 20 pieces of art and 56 cards. Total sales were £1,122 - a fantastic result! The weekend went very smoothly with setting up and taking down of the boards, and stands performed efficiently and safely. Thanks to all those who participated in exhibiting and helping out over the weekend. It was a fun couple of days!

​Website
Our website continues to mature and the galleries are almost completed; it is all taking shape nicely. Please do send in regular updates of work so your gallery remains current. Elspeth, at some point in the near future, will take half an hour on one Thursday evening to explain to members where to find things on the website. Going forward the website will be the main source of club information, dates of demos etc so it is quite important that you visit it regularly.

Demonstrations
I know that many members have missed having the chance to learn different techniques through demonstrations by visiting artists over the last couple of years and, now that life is starting to return to normal, I have started looking into some potential options and dates. Watch this space!

by Mark Peskett
​LAG Chair ​