Well, let me think...
Back in May, I took a recently finished oil painting to a local gallery to see if I could get a print made from it for a friend. All my equipment was playing up after an upgrade of my system so I couldn't do it. I was delighted when the gallery owner said how much he liked the painting and could he hang it in the gallery and make prints to sell. My answer was, of course yes, yes and YES! He also asked to see my other work and so I took everything I had ever done over to him on a memory stick. He liked loads of my older pieces and will be creating prints from them to sell in the gallery. That original painting I took to him sold just yesterday and the lady that bought it wants to commission me to paint two more scenes for her.
I have had a few portrait commissions on the go too, so work is pretty busy for me lately which is super. Christmas is fast approaching so I suspect there will be more to come especially as I am offering 20% off my pastel portraits until the end of November.
www.portraitsetc.co.uk
In other news I got married on 31st July to the wonderful Mark Davidson who makes everything in life shiny and bright for me. We had a lovely quiet ceremony tailored just for us and it was a perfect day in all respects.
So far it's been a busy year. I have also been working to get a book of my Girl in the Red Dress artwork published by trying to gain some funding via Kickstarter. The idea for this came about after I produced a series of paintings which formed part of a healing journey for me after a traumatic life event that I am unfortunately unable to share the details of. The paintings were simplistic but each one bore a deeper meaning within it's symbolism. I decided to put my own word of wisdom to accompany each image as inspiration for surpassing life's challenges. My hope was to self-publish the book to offer support to others who may be struggling at various times on their own journeys.
Unfortunately there are now only 10 days left of my campaign and it looks as though I may not make my target of the production costs. If you feel that this is a worthy endeavour please consider supporting me by pledging through the Kickstarter site. No funds will be taken from you or received by me unless the goal is reached so help me by sharing the project with others and spreading the word. There are lots of nice incentives for pledging in the form of Red Dress greetings cards, prints, original artwork and the book itself of course, all have a value of more than the pledge amount and could be delivered in time for Christmas if the project goes ahead.
Maybe, with your help and a little miracle, this last 10 days could be the making of it.
Lots of exciting projects to keep me going art wise and I'm enjoying it immensely. I am starting to feel as if my dear psychic lady may have been right when she told me to persevere with my artwork as I would make it big over the next few years after struggling to get noticed for so long. Thank you Lilla Bek, for giving me the incentive to keep at it, I am just starting to see results.
I will try to do a better job of keeping up with this blog from now on but for now I must get back to the easel. These masterpieces won't paint themselves you know? ;)
