Art Business - for Artists

Today I launched a new website Art Business - for Artists. It's the product of nearly 10 years of writing about art including the business side of art - and quite a few years experience of business before that.

When I became involved in art, I was coming from a long career on the business side of life.

My background in education and business

I'd first qualified as a teacher but I was a baby boomer and I qualified just as the government was reducing school places and shutting schools. Becoming a teacher was a remote prospect.

Instead I became an accountant prompted in part by what I saw in schools re. the management of money. I thought there was a good chance I might have more benefit on education if I became an accountant - and so that's what I did - and gained my second professional and occupational qualification.

Then I decided that it was obvious that what I really needed was an MBA(!)because I didn't want to just do the accountancy bit for the rest of my life, I wanted to get involved with financial management in a more strategic sense. So I went to the London Business School and did a part-time MBA degree. This involved me in fitting in enough class contact hours to be able to have the NUS Card which only full time students were entitled to - at the same time as I was holding down a third tier management job managing a couple of groups of accountants delivering services for rather large budgets! (People often ask how I fit everything in. Believe me after three years of doing a part-time Masters Degree at the same time as a full-time job, you learn how to make it work!)

After that came a career which involved working for my professional institute in a marketing role as well as travelling all over the UK to work for clients in analytical roles focused on performance improvement. Which was topped off by a very senior management role with responsibility for support services across a very large service.

So I come pretty steeped in business performance management, marketing, money management and analysis.

When I retired I decided to use this knowledge and experience to help artists with an aspect of 'being an artist' which many struggle with.

So I started to create websites on a topic basis. Every time I learned about a new subject and how it worked in art, I made a website. Some of them have been extremely popular over the years and have had very many visitors - and some very nice words have been said about them.

The migration starts....

I was making and keeping the webpages on large article sites (which basically meant they were no cost to me).  However the day of the article site appears to be doomed. Google does not like them as they seem to be targeted by scammers and spammers.

The site I used for my webpages became the latest one to fold - which happened very fast last summer - and all my webpages were exported to a new site. I have to say it's not one which provides an adequate framework for my topics and I finally decided I needed to start moving them for the very first time to brand new websites which would focus on what I'm calling "a big niche"....

...and this is the first one to go public. (There will be a second one next week!)

Art Business - for Artists 

URL - http://www.artbusinessinfo.com
I've now moved enough content to make it a site worth publishing and drawing to your attention. However it's nowhere near finished - and I expand on what it currently contains below.

The home page of my new website Art Business - for Artists 

Content

So what can I tell you about it?

It's got a lot of content already - but there's much more to come.  There's a menu of broad topic areas across the top of the site which you can see on every page and most have a drop down menu. Some large topics then have a sub-menu - such as How to write an Artist Statement and How to Price Your Art.

I'm still very much at the experimental stage as to to optimal content on one topic and one page so feedback would be appreciated as to how well the individual pages and navigation works.

Communication for Artists

The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015 - Call for Entries

The Call for Entries for The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015 is now published. This post is an overview of the main points of information and interest for anybody thinking of applying.

PLUS links to the artists who were selected last year, who won and what the exhibition looked like - in 2014 and in previous years - at the end of this post.

OVERVIEW: Call for Entries

This post tells you about:

• who can enter
• what you can enter
• the time table
• the exhibition

KEY POINTS

• The deadline for submissions 5pm, Monday 15th June 2014. 
• Entry for the 2015 competition is ONLINE.
• This is the official information page
• The top prize is £10,000 and the runner up prizes is also good (£6,000)
• Those who like painting cityscapes compete for a special prize worth £1,500
• In 2014
• 684 works by 361 artists were submitted for consideration by the judges - who selected
• 93 works (13.6%) by 73 artists (20%)

My recommendation

Have a go and enter two works. The reason being:

• Those are really good percentages compared to some exhibitions (eg BP Portrait = c. 2% of works submitted are selected) 
• It costs you nothing more than the entry fee to test out whether your work is good enough to be selected.

Process

You submit your work digitally in the first instance. The judges review the digital images and select those that they'd like to see framed and in person.

The artists are notified as to  whether or not they have passed the first sift of entries. You then get to submit your framed work. The judges review the work selected via the digital entry and decide which paintings should be included in the exhibition. (This is where you can lose out through bad framing)

It's expected that around 100 paintings will be selected and exhibited from the entries - but it partly depends on size. It's typical for some artists to have more than one work selected so it's generally less that 100 artists.

If your work is not included then you need to pick it up later that week

If it is included you'll get an invite to the Artists Preview Evening before the exhibition opens - to which you will either bring your very proud partner or parents or your best friends!

Then if you win I ask you whether I can take a photograph of you with your painting. You say Yes and that's how you get featured on this blog!

Kathryn Maple - with her painting "Fatboys Diner" 
which won the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2014 (£10,000)
- see my blog post Kathryn Maple wins Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2014(all photographs of the exhibition copyright Katherine Tyrrell 

 OK - now for the details!

How to enter

Who can submit entries

• The competition is open to all artists born or resident in the UK. 
• There are no age limits for artists wishing to enter.

The rules and guidelines are confusing on this issue

In one part it's "born or resident" - meaning foreign nationals and expats can submit work

In another part it states "born and resident" - meaning neither foreign nationals not expats can submit work.

I suspect it's the former but will check.  I'd also recommend that anybody who falls into the category of neither being born here or born in the UK but not currently resident here should also ask this question.

 What sort of work can be submitted

Daphne Todd at Messums

Daphne Todd, one of the Judges of The Big Painting Challenge, is currently having a solo exhibition at Messum's at 28 Cork Street in London. In this post I highlight the scope of the show and some of the paintings I love!

Solo exhibition of oil paintings on birch panels

©  Daphne Todd

I missed the PV due to South London rush hour traffic as I tried to get back after the Ravillious preview (of which more tomorrow). Instead I had the delightful experience of a gallery almost all to myself early the following day.

At the end are two links to previous posts devoted to Daphne in which I highlight the way she works for those who like this side of things. Suffice it to say she works entirely from life. There's a fascinating extract from a conversation between Martin Gayford and Daphne Todd in the catalogue (which has very good quality reproductions) in which she says

..."in order to catch what you have seen... a photograph won't necessarily do..what you are doing is catching some aspect of what you are looking at, one that means something to you, or has struck you in some way or has moved you. Therefore the record you make, with the through a photograph or otherwise, is a construct. Now if it satsfies you to go through the process of taking and printing a photograph, that's fine. But the photograph will record all sorts of things that you haven't seen. And it will record a lot of them in ways you didn't perceive them

If you are making things from observation, there is a slight accident abput what gets down on canvas or board - or doesn't get down. But it's a much more conscious series of choices. You are going for this patch of colour and saying something about how it relates to another patch of colour"

Things I liked about the exhibition:

• Daphne's use of colour - it's both naturalistic and quite unlike anything else you will have seen - it's very much a signature style. I'd love to see her paint just to work out which colours are involved in the mixes
• the range of shapes and sizes - it made for a more interesting exhibition. I find I get bored when everything looks fairly regimented on the wall. She picks and chooses her format for her subject - and then sometimes changes her mind and tacks on another board!
• her paintings of plants and flowers are memorable - both accurate and painterly at the same time - plus she looks for the colours in the light rather than just the natural colour which makes them feel far more real

Left) Christmas Roses in a paper bag

(right) Celebration Bouquet
oil on birch panels | ©  Daphne Todd

• I particularly loved the still life painting titled Blue Sky Reflection in a White Still Life. It seemed to me to be very much a painter's painting. It's a challenge to herself to find all the reflected colours in an arrangement of white objects. The website version is probably better than this one!

Review: RWS 'Watercolour Etc' Exhibition at the Bankside Gallery

"Watercolour Etc", the Spring Exhibition of the members of the Royal Watercolour Society is on display at the Bankside Gallery until 25th April 2015.

Watercolour poster for the RWS exhibition - featuring a watercolour painting by Richard Bawden

The exhibition is for members and associate members only. Each member could also submit one exceptional artwork done in another media. Interestingly not all artists submitted work in other media. That means c.20-25% of the c. 210 artworks on display in the exhibition are NOT paintings in water based media.

The rationale is that "many artists" embrace a range of tools and media in the making of their art and remain open to the possibilities whether technical or expressive. I'm not quite sure what the relevance of other media is to a media based society although I can readily understand the rationale in relation to a subject based one.

The Society is the centre of excellence for water based media on paper, which allows for a diverse and interesting range of approaches to the medium of watercolour.

The RWS keeps making me think it wants to be something else and is no longer 100% behind the promotion of water based media. It claims to be a centre of excellence but to do that it has to deliver - comprehensively and consistently. Diversity is fine but excellence is everything. It's a point worth pondering.

A view of the exhibition (Thames side)

If you're unable to get to the exhibition you can see the artwork (not to size):

• on the Bankside Gallery website
• on the Royal Watercolour Society website 
• in my video on YouTube (see below)

But if you want to see the paintings up close you need to visit the exhibition. The Gallery is open between 11am and 6pm every day during the exhibition.

Interestingly neither the Bankside Gallery website nor the RWS website provide any sort of facility for any art collector who wants to trigger a purchase online (e.g. reserve a painting). I think maybe they need to think quite seriously about the fact that this is how quite a lot of art is sold nowadays!

More about the paintings

Simon Schama's The Face of Britain - and selfies

Simon Schama talking about the process of Graham Sutherland painting Sir Winston Churchill

This morning I was at the National Portrait Gallery to hear a briefing from historian Simon Schama about The Face of Britain - which this autumn will comprise a major exhibition, a five part television programme and a book.

Simon Schama

Simon Schama's The Face of Britain 

This involves:

• five new displays under the overarching title of Simon Schama's The Face of Britain - an exhibition from 16 September 2015 - 4 January 2016, at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Admission free
• a five-part TV series on BBC2 in Autumn 2015 - with the same title
• a book of the same title to be published by Viking / Penguin Random House, Hardback £30 on 16 September 2015

The temporary displays of images within the permanent collection will be jointly curated by Simon Schama and the National Portrait Gallery curators ed by Chief Curator Dr Tarnya Cooper.

Rather than taking a chronological approach adopted by the permanent displays, the new temporary displays revolve around five themes:

• Power - this relates to the three different ways a portrait is considered
• the way we want to be seen (or others want people to be seen) - see the anecdote about Churchill at the end
• the job of the artist to endorse this perspective - up to a point
• the way the public views it
• Love - portraits are very often about creating pictures of people you don't want to lose
• Fame
• People - This covers people from less elite backgrounds. It's not just about introspection, it's also about scrutiny and inspection - and will include
  'Surveillance Photograph of Militant Suffragettes'  by Criminal Record Office
• Self - the "self portrait" section will look at how the artist uses the self-portrait for self-promotion and also focus on how people adopt and/or balance out the two ways of looking at yourself: 
• the narcissist - self-love
• after Montaigne - unsparing self-knowledge

Each theme will be in one room for each theme - so related portraits on a theme will be seen side by side even if in reality they are separated by centuries.  The overall scheme of things has been informed by Simon Schama’s innovative and challenging exploration of the development, character and meanings of British portraiture

What was possibly the most interesting aspect of the morning was listening to Simon Schama talk. He's extremely knowledgeable and has the ability to keep talking while hardly taking a breath, while jumping around between centuries and anecdotes. It was rather like an academic monologue - interspersed with absolutely fabulous soundbites!

The issue is what happens when we eyeball one another

We should be involved in looking at people 

The function of art is endurance. You want to remember 'that look'. Portraits provide the 'x factor' which the quick 'dumbed down' version of the selfie doesn't do. They're the equivalent of white noise. Portraits deliver the music. 

Directing him for television must be rather interesting!

I loved his story of how the very famous photograph of Churchill by Karsh - described by Schama as the visual equivalent of "we will fight them on the beaches" - was actually the photograph of a man who was annoyed because he had just been deprived of his Havana cigar!

The papers have rather pounced on just one comment - about selfies - which he made this morning.

• The Guardian - Simon Schama announces new portrait gallery displays with attack on selfies - with lots of comments on why people don't look at one another and in support of the selfie! 
• The Telegraph - Simon Schama: stop taking selfies, start looking at strangers - has what Schama actually said recorded accurately. I must start taking a recording device to these briefings!