Winter / Spring Art Society Exhibitions in 2022 - at the Mall and Bankside Galleries

As a lot of the constraints are removed, I thought I might as well list all the upcoming exhibitions at the Mall and Bankside Galleries which I'll be missing while 100% non-weight bearing on my right leg and mobilising entirely on my leftleg with a very dodgy knee and various aids.

I am of course being masochistic. It's an anxiety diversion tactic about the ankle fusion surgery next Monday. Oddly, the surgery does not bother me - it's the 12 weeks of not being able to walk / staying at home. On the other hand I wonder how long it will be before I can walk to a gallery in London, walk around the exhibition three times and then get myself home again. It's certainly been a long time since I've been able to do that easily and/or not be absolutely wiped out the next day. People keep telling me it takes about a year before you're back to 'normal' except I can't even remember what 'normal' feels like.....

I'm going to have to decide whether I can review from the Virtual / Online exhibitions - which I absolutely HATE doing. The difference between an exhibition online and in the gallery is ENORMOUS!

National Art Society Exhibitions at the Mall Galleries

Venue: Mall Galleries, The Mall, St. James's, London SW1Y 5AS

Admissions: 

• FBA Society Exhibitions: £5
• Concessions for people with disabilities (with free entry for one companion), Students, Registered Unemployed and Group Bookings (over ten in a group): £3
• FREE to Friends of Mall Galleries and Under 25s.

Website: https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk

Below I'm including overviews of some of my photos of the different exhibitions last year which you can find in albums on my Making A Mark Facebook Page - by art society and gallery

FEBRUARY - Pastel Society

• The 123rd Pastel Society Annual Exhibition 2022  17 February 2022 to 26 February 2022 - The exhibition has a theme of ‘Fresh Eyes’

some of my photos of the Pastel Society exhibition last year

MARCH - The Royal Society of British Artists

• The Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2022 3 March 2022 to 12 March 2022

some of my photos of last year's RBA exhibition

APRIL - Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours

• Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 14 April 2022 to 23 April 2022

MAY - Royal Society of Portrait Painters

• Royal Society of Portrait Painters | Annual Exhibition 2022 5 May 2022 to 14 May 2022

This one I might make - depending on whether or not I'm 100% weight-bearing - and how far I can move....

Read my review of lst year' exhibition to see what to expect https://makingamark.blogspot.com/2021/05/review-130th-annual-exhibition-of-royal-society-portrait-painters.html

National Art Society Exhibitions at the Bankside Galleries

Venue: Bankside Gallery, Thames Riverside, 48 Hopton Street, London SE1 9JH (next to Tate Modern)

Admission: FREE

Website: https://www.banksidegallery.com

FEBRUARY - Society of Wood Engravers

• Society of Wood Engravers 1 - 20 February 2022
• Society of Wood Engravers website: https://www.woodengravers.co.uk

The Society exists to promote wood engraving, but also embraces all forms of relief printing, which makes this show a fascinating and affordable collection of images inspired by a wide range of subjects.
This year's featured artist is Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers member, Ian Corfe-Stephens

MARCH - RWS Open

• RWS Open 4 - 20 March 2022
• RWS Open website - https://www.royalwatercoloursociety.co.uk/competition

Established by the Royal Watercolour Society, this annual open-submission exhibition explores innovation and experimentation in all forms of water-based media. Exhibiting artists range from established art professionals to those completely new to exhibiting.

MARCH - APRIL - RWS Spring Exhibition

• RWS Spring Exhibition 25 March 24 April 2022
• Royal Watercolour Society website - https://www.royalwatercoloursociety.co.uk

I've not been a fan of this exhibition in the more recent past - when it seemed to want to become "edgy" ditch traditional watercolour and reinvent itself as a genre for contemporary art - which in my opinion was not very good. It seems to have changed following the very welcome change of President.

This is how they describe it.

Reconsider your ideas about watercolour with the Royal Watercolour Society’s spring show. Expanding from traditional genres of watercolour painting, today members of the RWS explore the boundaries of this medium and use a wide variety of water-based media such as gouache, ink and acrylic. Be prepared to be delighted by modern work that is beautiful, exciting and distinguished.

MAY - JUNE - RE Original Prints

• RE Original Prints - 13 May - 11 June 2022
• Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers website - https://www.re-printmakers.com

This is a society which generates an exhibition which I regard as well worth a visit - except I keep forgetting what the dates are!

Review: The Final of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018

Last night was The Final of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - and this is a review of the programme and the decision.

The Final Portraits painted in 4 hours.

My guess as to who would win proved correct. The question up for discussion - in this post and any comments you might like to add - is whether or not the decision was justified.

What follows is my response to what we saw in the episode - in terms of

• the painting of Emili Sande, 
• the three portrait commissions - and finally
• what happened in terms of the decision-making.

Before the start - the set-ups for
(left to right) Danny Howes, Samira Addo and Hetty Lawlor

The Final Portraits - at the National Portrait Gallery

I think the three finalists were incredibly fortunate in having Emili Sande as their subject. She's got a "good head" and was incredibly still for four hours.

I made notes while watching.

• they all took photos as reference
• both Danny and Samira gridded up - the latter for the first time. 
• Hetty just stuck to her routine of starting with the eyes and getting those right and working out from there, measuring by eye as she went.
• Danny used a grid because he upped his normal size and used the photo and the grid to get the drawing placed on the canvas - and then painted from life
• Samira worried about using the grid as it seemed to throw out her timings. She looked quite tense and troubled by time.

In terms of who produced the best portrait - in Emili Sande's view it was Hetty.

I liked the portraits produced by both Hetty (best likeness) and Danny - some lovely painting of skin tones, which is clearly something he is very good at.

For me Samira seemed somewhat stressed having changed her normal way of working and while she definitely pulled it back towards the end, for me it wasn't one of her better paintings - although better than the one she produced for the semi-final where it was absolutely impossible to tell who the sitters actually were.

Hetty's drawing (in coloured pencils and acrylic) of Emili Sande

Danny Howes painting of Emili - the largest painting and 'head'

Samira's painting of Emili

The other artists

There were a dozen artists working from a video of Emili Sande in a nearby room - with the winner promised a pass to the next series. To be honest, I wasn't impressed by most of what I saw. It occurred to me that these might be the reserve painters who could fill in at the last minute at a Heat if somebody dropped out or got sick. I could be wrong....

The winner in the sideshow turned out to be a female Army helicopter pilot called Hannah Shergold who produced a large and very colourful painting using palette knives (and has an interesting website! Turns out she is a a fully qualified Lynx helicopter commander who has served all over the world including Canada, Kenya, Germany and Afghanistan.)

The Commissions

I wish they'd given more time to the Commissions. If the decision is supposed to be based on both why not give them equal time?

How to watch Sky Arts - Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 without subscribing to Sky!

I do like a good television art competition!

Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 started streaming last night with the first episode of this year's competition

• see my earlier blog post Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - Call for Entries for the details of how people got to take part

Some of you may recall that I'm particularly interested this year as last April I got to attend (and photograph) one of this year's heats as it was being filmed. 

• see Watching a heat of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - where the only thing that got posted was photographs of people's palettes - which are of course always very interesting!

So naturally I'd like to see the programme and find out how everybody does.

I might even write commentaries as I do for the BBC's The Big Painting Challenge! :)

• see Review: The Big Painting Challenge FINAL 2017 for links to all my commentaries on this BBC series.

Plus it reminded me that in my post The Top 10 Art Blog Posts of 2017 - on Making A Mark that I had to do a special section for the The Top 10 'Art on TV' Blog Posts of 2017 because my posts about on TV are so very popular!

So with that in mind I quite naturally had a whinge on Facebook about how it was such a pity that you can't watch this competition online without subscribing to Sky TV - which I simply won't do because I really am NOT going to shell out £20 per month via a contract to watch one television programme!!

When are Sky TV going to wake up the notion there is an income stream to be gained from those who
* ONLY want to watch Sky Arts online and
* have zero interest in signing up for Sky TV?

In turn, there were lots of fellow whingers, all feeling exactly the same.

However one chap popped up and pointed out that you can watch Sky Arts via Now TV for £7.99 per month - with no contract.  Apparently what you do is buy a NOW TV Entertainments Pass and the show is part of the programmes they show.

So I looked at my television and I still have absolutely no idea at all how I get NOW TV on my television.

However I did find something in the Help Section which says How to watch NOW TV on a Mac

So now I'm going to investigate further. 

What are you going to do?

UPDATE:  I can now watch!  Here's what I did:

• downloaded the Now TV App onto my iPhone (which has unlimited mobile data on my Three package)
• bought a NOW TV entertainment pass (I bought one for three months at a discounted rated)
• found (with a little difficulty) the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year programme - including the first episode of the new series.
• I'll also be downloading it onto my iPad and iMac.

REFERENCE

 Gareth Reid is Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2017

Can a portrait artist play fast and loose with a commission?

Do you think Nelson Shanks has been rather underhand in his portrayal of Bill Clinton?
Is it ever OK for a portrait artist to undermine your client or subject?

The big art news story today is that a portrait painted by Nelson Shanks of Bill Clinton contains, according to Shanks, a hidden allusion to the Monica Lewinsky affair.

This is the portrait - painted in 2005 - which now forms part of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in the USA (I'm sure they'll be thinking twice about accepting another portrait by Shanks!)

It's actually impossible to get a link to the page which is a rather odd way for a museum website to behave. However if you want to take a closer look at it go to the National Portrait Gallery's Portal to American Portraits then use the quick search and the search term "Shanks Clinton" to generate the portrait in question.

Once you've got it you can see an enlarged image - although the best images would appear to be in all today's papers!

Here are just some of the 450+ newspaper reports about it.  The various comments make fascinating reading. If Mr Shanks thought that this 'reveal' would enhance his reputation it seems he is sadly mistaken