Demonstrations, Exhibitions, Workshops, weekends are full of Art!

The coming weekends are going to be busy busy with art, with lots of shows, workshops, and demonstrations coming up.

I spent this morning with the Friends of the Botanic Gardens Art Group, as their guest artist. 

The 'Friends' have the use of an excellent venue, where they meet to paint together once a month. 

My visit had been planned for several months, and the idea was for the keen gardeners among the group to bring flowers from their gardens. Many of the group are keen botanical artists, so I dedicated the session to loose, expressive paintings based on the flowers bought in on the day, to provide (a hopefully enjoyable!) contrast to the usual botanical techniques. 

These large, loose, floral works are a new series for me, which I've been working on for almost a year now. Using flowers as the inspiration, it provides an opportunity to work with a very different pallet to my usual landscape and city scenes, including a wide range of pinks / reds / magentas / lilacs. I've also been experimenting with some relatively unusual products, to give duochrome / luminescent / shimmering effects, all of which I demonstrated on the day. It's a chance to really splash some paint on, watch it combine on the paper, and to enjoy the drips and blooms and surprises that watercolour gives you if you let it.

We had a full house today, a room full of lowers, and a lot of energy and experimentation happening. A very enjoyable day - thank you to everyone that bought flowers, joined in, and took the time to give me such lovely feedback, all very much appreciated.

My next demonstration will be at Art in Action, which is being run alongside Arterslie, then workshops on June 20th and July 25th. Exhibitions in June include Kohia Terrace (one of my favourite shows of the year!) and Artex, Napier. Have a look at my exhibition schedule to see what else is coming up.