This year our Christmas competition takes the theme of portraits - of our art group members. As usual, this is intended to be a fun competition for members to take part in if they wish to. That said, if previous such challenges are anything to go by, the competition is likely to be pretty fierce!

To help members prepare and keep track, here are the essential details and dates to be aware of.

Details:

• The competition is conducted anonymously, which makes it more intriguing - both in terms of whose portrait you're allocated to paint. Please try not to discuss your painting with fellow members. 
• Joy will assign a number to each photo of members, and will then allocate a numbered photo randomly to those taking part in the competition.
• Your portrait can be in any medium - pencil, charcoal, oils, acrylics, watercolour or mixed media.
• Bring your finished portrait to the Frolics evening on Thursday 19 December but keep them under wraps so that the artist's identity is not revealed. Joy and a couple of helpers will display the portaits on the stage. 
• We will ask members present on the night to vote for their favourite painting. The method of voting will be explained on the night. Joy will announce the winner at the end of the evening.
• We'll publish a gallery of entries on our website after the competition.

Dates:

• Thursday 26 September - photo shoot during our evening art session.
• Thursday 10 or 17 October - NB updated information: Joy will distribute digital photos to members, by email, and informing them of their number (this is instead of handing out printed copies). If you'd like a printed version of the photo allocated to you please arrange this yourself.
• Thursday 19 December - LAG Frolics evening and competition judging. Bring your portrait with you to the Frolics.

Previous portrait competitions
​We last held this theme in the autumn of 2018, judged at the Christmas Frolics event. Here are a few photos taken of the entries to give newer members an idea of what to expect. Several members have left LAG since 2018 so you may not recognise some of the portraits - no reflection on the likeness of any paintings themselves!
​The winning portrait was of Margaret Gray, painted by Mark Peskett (former member and previous LAG chair). Apologies for the photo quality, which was affected in places by glare.

Dear Members,
This will be the last blog/newsletter I write as Chair of your Committee. Joy and I have set an official handover date of 7 July, from then on she will assume the chairmanship and I know she will do a great job for you. I may or may not take a role in the new Committee; that is a decision for Joy.
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I took over chairmanship of the LAG Committee from Paul Fisher in March 2020, when the first wave of COVID was reaching a critical phase. Shortly after, COVID infection mitigations were imposed. These included restrictions on gatherings of people, which meant our Thursday evening meetings were suspended. During the lockdowns, the heartbeat of LAG was kept going by Zoom meetings. It was not easy to keep the impetus up, but I do feel that having that weekly video call gave those who wanted it a chance to talk to other members, not always about art, often everything except art! I really enjoyed some of those calls! So if you did participate regularly …. THANK YOU.

Where we are today
​After several false starts due to ever-changing COVID rules, we are now back at our regular meetings. Natural and healthy attrition has allowed the intake of new members. Our Thursday evenings are now well attended and a real sense of dynamism pervades the hall. I really appreciate the enthusiasm. So here’s a special nod to new members!
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Moving forward, as confidence grows, I am sure we can get back to life drawing, more socialising and generally getting back to the ‘new normal’ – not sure I ever fit into that place!

Setting priorities
​When I took over from Paul, who did a fantastic job, it was very unclear in my mind what our membership really wanted, with several events not being very well attended. Therefore, we sent out a questionnaire to all members to seek their views. The response was clear; members valued Thursday meetings, demonstrations and exhibitions. 

We therefore took the decision to focus on those priorities and spend less time on peripheral items. Your responses to the questionnaire naturally led to where your Committee should focus their time and resources. Several Committee changes were implemented in the interim, strengthening certain functions. In summary, your Committee has:

• Updated banking mandates
• Set up online banking
• Implemented quarterly financial updates
• Implemented an annual forecast (work in progress)
• Repainted the exhibition boards
• Represented LAG on the Lacock Village Hall Committee to resolve issues with Hall standards, notably: the ladies toilets, and Hall lighting.
• Replaced our website platform
• Set up a summer social event (work in progress, may be too late for this year)
• Created a LAG news subscription database

Website
A specific comment on our website. I am very pleased to say that following its launch in November last year the LAG website looks fresh, modern and is fit for purpose. I am very grateful to Elspeth for what was practically a full time job for a lot of 2021! However, as with any website it is a continual work in progress and requires members to submit paintings for their gallery pages on a regular basis. Remember, this is YOUR website for you, so please do use it to its full advantage.

I am certain with the arrival of our new members and the ‘new normal’ that the priorities will evolve and change. That’s completely normal. I look forward to remaining a member of the LAG family under its new chair, whom I have committed to offering my support throughout the handover period.
I firmly believe that for the Chair Thursday evening attendance is very important, leading from the front, so to speak. By stepping down I am looking forward to allowing myself more freedom to spend time with loved ones and with family, who seem to be producing offspring at an alarming rate!
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Many thanks to you all for your support throughout my time as Chair of LAG – it has been a pleasure.
Mark

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.

​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 ​

Dear all,
Welcome to our December newsletter. Thank you for your patience while we've been working on our new website platform, which went live in November. Now that the website transition is complete we will resume producing our members' newsletter on a monthly basis.

November’s exhibition was a resounding success and, in spite of the reduced foot fall in Lacock resulting largely from COVID, the exhibition paid for itself and generated over £1,000 in revenue for our members. Thank you to everyone in the group who played a part in staging the exhibition, in particular to Ken Baldy and Joy Tickell. It was good to see our new members joining in with the set-up and take-down of the exhibition and selling their artwork too.

​Demonstrations
As you are aware, the demonstration by Soraya French (planned for November) was cancelled due to COVID precautions. Next year’s demonstrations are under consideration currently but we are finding that many artists are adopting a “wait and see” approach in respect of COVID, which makes planning a little awkward at present. However, do keep an eye out on the website for upcoming dates as we issue them.

​Annual fees
For those of you who prefer to pay for their membership each term, the 2022 term dates will be released at the beginning of the year. Unless you are in arrears for previous terms there will be no fees due until March 2022 due to the pause imposed by COVID restrictions. 

Website plans
As mentioned above, in November, Lacock Art Group’s new website went live. I am very pleased with how the process was executed and I believe the site adds a fresh dimension to our Group’s online presence. It is certainly much easier and less laborious to manage behind the scenes than the old platform! And it’s more cost effective too.

Four people will be assigned to maintaining the website content; Elspeth is the webmaster and Joy, Karen and Mark are also in the process of training up to perform work on it. You will have or will soon receive an email from one of us, requesting images and short bios for use in the individual members’ galleries. Please respond ASAP to the request, as we have set ourselves a deadline to have all member galleries created and populated by January 6, 2022.

As we move into 2022, the site will mature as we add functionality and automate some of the processes that we currently do by email, which will ensure consistency and expand the site’s following. Once again a massive “thank you” to Elspeth who was the focal point for the whole transition of the site. She will also be holding a session at one of the Thursday evening meetings to show people where to find information etc on the new site.

​Looking ahead
In the meantime, I will look forward to seeing you on the December 16, if you can attend, for our “Christmas frolics”, which is also the last evening meeting of 2021.
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By popular request we have shortened the “holiday” period in December/January by one week so we will resume evening meetings on Thursday 6 January, 2022.
I wish you all a joyous festive break and a happy new year!

Cheers,
Mark