It was a pleasure to walk into
the 298th Exhibition of the
Royal Society of British Artists yesterday - particularly after
my very disappointing visit to the RWS Contemporary Painting Exhibition on Tuesday.
I write very few negative posts about exhibitions - one was this week (see above) and another was three years ago - see
RBA 2012: An exhibition of Middle England? Since that post both the RBA and the exhibition seems to have come on in positive leaps and bounds. It's good to see that the problems I alluded to in my 2012 post are much less evident and/or have disappeared. In particular the issues in relation to the calibre of artwork seem to have disappeared.
In addition, I do remember it thinking it was somewhat ironic that I was seeing better watercolours from artists selected from the open entry than I did from artists selected for the RWS competition's exhibition.
This is an exhibition worth entering if you want your artwork to be seen in London and/or want to become a member of a national art society.
Things to note about this exhibition
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| Paintings and sculptures in the Threadneedle Space |
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More paintings and sculpture
Includes: (top left) The Davison Award for Oil Painting - won by Olwyn Bowey RA RBA
(column of small paintings - The Alfred Daviels 'Personal Favourite' Award - Barbara Richardson
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There is LOTS of artwork in this exhibition - covering every type of media except digital, photography and video. Most but not all is figurative/repsentational artwork.
This is also an art society which believes in well and truly using all three galleries and getting a lot of artwork on the walls and around the exhibition. I personally love this!
- 504 artworks in the main part of the exhibition from members and selected artists via the open entry
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Paintings and sculpture in one of the bays in the West Gallery
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| Paintings in oil, acrylic, watercolour and pastel - in the same bay in the West Gallery |
This year fifty six NADFAS Societies supported the venture and they submitted a staggering 368 images of original student work including paintings, ceramics and sculpture. The challenge was for RBA President James Horton and his fellow council members to pick a number of pieces which combined the highest levels of skill, expression and draughtsmanship.
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| artwork by RBA Scholars |
In general, it's a good-looking exhibition which was a pleasure to photograph.
You can also see:
There seem to be LOTS more fine art prints in the exhibition this year - submitted by both members and open entry artists
There seems to be
a trend towards larger and detailed monochromatic works - using pencil or pen and ink in particular
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Monochromatic entries - etchings, pencil and pen and ink artwork - from the open
North Gallery |
This is an open exhibition worth entering. However you do need to be aware of the numbers. I gather the open entry was c.1,500 entries of which c.300 were selected for review and about 100 were selected for exhibition. That's a lot more than get into other exhibitions by the other art societies.
I'll see if I can get hold of more accurate numbers.
The RBA Award Winners 2015
The 2015 prizewinners are listed below.
The De Lazlo Medal (£1000 plus medal and a special display in next year's exhibition) 2015
To be decided
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The Arts Club Charitable Trust Award in association with The Arts Club
£1,000 Prize
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The Artist Magazine Award (A feature in The Artist Magazine, print and digital edition)
all three paintings by Andrew Marr |
I have to say I knew Mr Marr could draw but I'd only ever seen his paintings in his book
A Short Book About Drawing and I have to say I like them! He's got a great eye for composition.
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| The Dry Red Press Award (work published as a greeting card) Christopher’s Tomatoes by Jacqueline Taber |
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The Edward Wesson Award (£100)
For watercolour painting
Glass Eyes by Mollie Andrews |
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Frinton Frames Award
(£200 of picture framing at Frinton Frames bespoke picture frame makers)
Breakfast Table by John Martin RBA |
The Michael Harding Awards - Two prizes of £500 and 10 painting sets
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The Michael Harding AwardDungeness by Martin Leman
plus The Alfred Daniels ‘Personal Favourite’ Award for a Narrative work - all work |
and
Reverie by
Charles Hardaker
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The Geoffrey Vivis Memorial Award (£100) The Green Bridge of Wales, Pembrokeshire by Tim Galton
This was a very large painting |
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(Bottom left)
The Gordon Hulson Memorial Prize for draughtsmanship, variety and explorationSelf portrait facing Artist’s Block by Robert Lloyd
(top right)The Lazlo Award to a Young Artist for Technical ExcellenceWeightless by Tatyana Kulida Shelley |
The John Ingram Memorial Prize for a Young Artist -
Self Portrait by
Stanley Welch (Truro College)
The Alfred Daniels ‘Personal Favourite’ Award for a Narrative work (six prizes of £100)
Artists I liked
I liked the suite of small works of fantasy art by
David Eustace RBA. It seemed to suggest a complex interior world.
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| Paintings by David Eustace (oil and acrylic) £750 each |
I'm also a perennial fan of
Annie Williams RWS RE RBA still lifes in both watercolours and fine art prints (see my blog post from a past RBA exhibition
Annie Williams demonstrates a still life in watercolour)
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Paintings and prints by Annie Williams
they sit well with one another in frames which don't compete |
Every year I am entrances by the printmaking of
Austin Cole. He's superb at using the panoramic format. This year he had a set of six based on a visit to China. If you like fine art prints you should have a serious look at his website.
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Part of Austin Cole's series of etchings (edition of 20)
"Beijing Hutong" |
There was also a lot of sculpture to like!
[
PS I'd have loved to write about this earlier but commitments elsewhere prevented this. Next year I will be there at the beginning!]
Recent RBA Exhibitions
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