American Pastel Society to honor Bill Creevy

Yesterday the 39th Annual Exhibition of the American Pastel Society opened at the National Arts Club in New York City.

39th Annual Open Juried Exhibition of the Pastel Society of America

Accepted entries usually number 170 to 200 pastels out of more than 1,000 entries. Prizes amounting to over $25,000 in both cash and pastel materials are presented at a special awards ceremony, which also recognizes the "Hall of Fame" honoree and the "Friend of Pastel" honoree, followed by the annual dinner in the gallery.Pastel Society of America

There are no images as yet of paintings included in this year's exhibition on their website as yet - however they should be posted at some point.  It seems unlikely that this will be until after the Awards Ceremony on 25th September at 4pm - which is followed by an Awards Dinner in the evening.

UPDATE:  You can now see the works by the prizewiining artists in 2011 - who are as detailed below.

Makingamark's Top Ten Art Books in August 2011

This post is later than I'd hoped and that's partly because Amazon has changed its systems for ranking books and it's now even more of a nightmare than it was before to sort out the best books last month. (See the end - I've actually given up and gone to bed before finalising one of the updates!)

What are the changes?

First of all, gone is the "sort" of results which allowed you to look for "best selling" and in comes a new "sort" category called "popularity".

It's anybody's guess at the moment as to what this actually means - and whether it is to take account of those books which are free downloads.  Presumably this is also to differentiate books listed according to this "sort" from the completely separate "bestsellers" listing.  One of the challenges of doing my list was that they were always capable of delivering two different results!  I imagine the term bestsellers will in future only relate to books which are SOLD!

What it's still not possible to do is look at a best seller over a specific period.  So much of my task is about interpolation having looked at it two or three different ways!  (This particular month has also been more complicated than usual because there are vast quantities of architecture and building books currently clogging up the rankings!)

Second - the "sort" which gives you the books ranked by "average customer review" now no longer ranks books according to the quantity of reviews and the star ratings given.

In fact I can find no obvious ranking at all.  Which means I have to look through lots more pages to make sure there's nothing lurking.  If this change is intended to make the reviews which count the ones which are more current, that would make more sense.  However I don't think it does!  There's just no obvious logic to it.

I cannot tell you how much I'd dearly love to get my hands on the database design for Amazon Books and give it a radical shake up and make it much more rigorous and reliable.  I am still totally exasperated by how totally c****y the categorisation is and the fact that so many books are in totally the wrong category.

How I've addressed this

Popular Art History Books - per Goodreads

I'm now experimenting with a different way of tackling and triangulating the question of "top rated".

I'm not going to do it on the number of reviews.  Rather, in very broad terms, I'm looking for the highest average for any book which has had a decent number of reviews - which is likely to be a figure which will vary depending on the topic.  That way we should get back to something that is highly rated - rather than rated by a lot of people - or the Amazon alternative which is a complete nonsense.

I'll say more when I'm more confident that the approach I'm using is producing reliable results.  I've got a nasty feeling a spreadsheet is in the offing to keep track of the various different sources!

Anyway - The Best NEW Art Books - published in August has been revised and updated

However I've absolutely got to go to bed, so I'll finish off Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books in the morning. [Now updated - it took much longer than usual!]

Wolf Kahn fans will like the Best New Art Books last month!  Plus the painting section is dominated by UK authors.  I've already bought one of these!

4th September 2011 (+1) - Who's made a mark this week?

Is there an "Ides of Late Summer" which makes bad things happen? I don't quite know what's happening at the moment re the combination of very bad weather (USA) and civil unrest (UK)

Before the Fire - by Carol Marine

Yesterday, very bad wild fires in Texas meant Carol Marine (Carol Marine's Painting A Day) and her husband David had to vacate their house very fast in the early afternoon.  News about her home town of Bastrop, Texas suggests there has been zero containment and 300 homes have burned.  She is now 95% sure her house and studio have  been burned to the ground.  See:

• Carol's blog - Before the Fire in which she tells us what she chose to grab as she left her home and studio fast
• Karin Jurick's blog - Help for Our Good Friends which points us all to
• this post by Jennifer (David's ex-wife and Carol's co-author) which highlights that Carol and David lost their home - a fundraiser - and which also recounts what happened as Jennifer was there when the alarm was raised

When we stood in the front street, we could see huge clouds of billowing smoke. There wasn’t even enough time for them to take more than their computers. I backed my car through their front yard and up to Carol’s studio, but we didn’t take anything more than a few small paintings of Carol’s. They lost all her art that filled their house.

Carol  commented

The good news is, we have fire insurance. I'm trying to think of more good news, but that's all I got.

Just the day before the fire I had an email from Carol's husband David asking if I would be kind enough to highlight another appeal - this time a Help the Children of Africa Challenge on Daily Paintworks - which is aiming to tackle the needs of those caught up in the current famine

The UN has said up to 400,000 children in the Horn of Africa could die without aid and up to 11 million people require food assistance. 

He commented (ironically given what happened the next day)

I hope you are doing well. Carol and I are enjoying our 75th day of over 100 degree (38 C) here in central Texas!

Notwithstanding what's happened to David and Carol  - the auction is still up and running on the website that David built for Daily Paintworks.  I'm sure they will be very happy if you choose to participate/contribute to either this appeal for support or the one highlighted on Jennifer's blog.

Why not send them a message too maybe?

This post is also late I've been on "community" duty over the weekend as the Olympic Borough I live in had a very large and very contentious demonstration and counter-demonstration on Saturday - with all Marches banned by the Home Secretary and 3,000 riot police on local streets to cope with the so-called "static demonstrations" which were anything but in the latter part of the day.

Hence some considerable dislocation in my normal routine - not helped by helicopters hovering overhead, emergency vehicle sirens blaring on and off and on and riot police actively enforcing civil order in our local park - all of which added to the anxiety levels of local residents!

I've taken to staring at house details in rural areas!

Anyway - on to what caught my eye in respect of art last week. (I'm afraid I'm image light this week - I now need dinner but will try and do something about this later)

Special Loan Exhibition of Royal Portrait Miniatures

The Annual Exhibition of the The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers will this year have an additional Special Loan Exhibition of Royal Portrait Miniatures from Queen Elizabeth 1 (1533 - 1603) to Queen Elizabeth II (1926-present).

I gather news of it is triggering miniature artists and collectors to book airtravel to London from all over the world!

‘George IV, as Prince of Wales’, watercolour on ivory
by Richard Cosway (1742-1821)
Private Collection.
‘Special Loan Exhibition of Royal Portrait Miniatures’ at the Mall Galleries

POLL: What makes somebody buy a painting?

It constantly intrigues me as to what makes somebody want to buy one painting compared to another.  I wonder how often you also ponder on what makes artwork sell?

It seems to me as if everybody has an idea of what makes a painting that somebody will buy - but do we ever try and articulate it?

At one extreme, we can have artists who will produce paintings just for themselves "because this will never sell".  While at the other extreme we have artists who have to produce artwork that they know has a very good chance of selling because they have to keep a roof over their head, hungry mouths to feed and bills to pay.

Girl with the red hat (1667) - Johannes Vermeer
oil on canvas, 22.8 x 18 cm

Then we have people who say that paintings which make a point of featuring red will always sell (see addendum at end).  Then there's the art collectors who will buy anything by an artist so long as it's a collectable name and it's got a collectable signature - and it really doesn't matter what it is! While the art tutors are always going on about important it is to stop the eye from moving out of the painting.

So I sat down and made a list of all the things I could think of which makes people want to buy a painting.