There's a new look to the Annual Exhibition of the ROI - which is an
annual exhibition that features a variety of oil paintings by both established
and emerging artists, the majority of whom are members of the Royal Institute
of Oil Painters.
 |
| The theme of this year's ROI Exhibition is "Home" |
I visited last Wednesday for the PV and Awards Ceremony and then again on
Saturday afternoon to finish my photographs and it gradually dawned on me that
it felt and looked different - and then slowly I realised why that might be.
The Demographic Change
It took a while to work it out - and then I realised, almost all the "old
guard" who I've been seeing in the Annual Exhibitions for the last 20 years
have almost all gone.
Of those still alive, relatively few are still painting and
exhibiting.
It feels like the overall demographic of ROI members has really changed - so there are now many more younger artists and many more female artists.
-
Older members have been replaced
- by much younger artists who have done their bit as
open artists and
- who have now progressed to becoming members and
- in turn, some of them are now officers of the
ROI in their middle age.
I'm now older than most of the people running the show - which feels very different for me too!
I remember well walking around
the ROI annual exhibition in 2010
with
Adebanji Alade PROI while we discussed how we could make even more of an impression
than he was already and become a member!
Last Wednesday, I saw him deliver the most electrifying tub thumping awards
ceremony I've seen in years - as President of the ROI. It feels like maybe the engine room has had an overhaul and there's a new drive to reinforce and develop the ROI.
While on the wall next to the cafe, very sadly, there's a record of a number of the
stalwart member exhibitors of the past who have died in the last year. The last year we lost so many in one year was 2022. These included:
-
Fred Beckett FROI
(1933-2025) who was an ex President of the ROI and the Wapping Group;
-
John McCombs
ROI (1943-2025) who never grew tired of painting the Pennine village of
Delph and
-
Brian Ryder
(1944-2025) - whose landscapes I always looked forward to seeing and
who never ever had a painting rejected by the ROI. I found these "bon
mots" on his website - which I'm sure some of you will value
-
Art is not what we see but what you can make others see.
-
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good
things.
-
A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy.
When you always make your meaning plain you end up boring people.
-
Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you
do.”
So it felt a bit like you do on New Year's Eve - it's goodbye to the old guard
and hello to all the new much younger painters hoping to become members as
well as those who have been around a few years and are now running the show!
Interestingly most of those new artists are ones I first came across online.
It was good to see that
Greg Mason has now become a member and taken over the
role of looking after the website and social media
(PS You may remember Greg from Landscape Artist of the Year - when he abandoned the chosen view and still made it to the Final! (His blog post / My Blog post. For the unitiated, I have a memory like an elephant and an archive which services it well!!)
This is his video tour of the exhibition