The Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2016: Shortlisted Artists

Six artists have been shortlisted for The Columbia Threadneedle Prize of £20,000 plus a solo exhibition at Mall Galleries.

Exhibition

All visitors to the exhibition in February 2016 will be encouraged to vote for their favourite to win the second major prize - the £10,000 The Visitors’ Choice Award.

The exhibition will be at 

• The Mall Galleries including Visitors’ Choice Award: Wednesday 3rd to Saturday 20th February 2016 - open daily 10am to 5pm. Admission free.
• Palazzo Strozzi, Florence: Mon 27 June to Sun 24 July 2016

There's no Facebook Page for the Prize any more - just an event listing on Facebook.

The Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2016 - Shortlist

The six artworks and artists who have been shortlisted  are listed below

Peter Clossick (linked website) - Member of the New England Art Club; Past President of the London Group and Freeman of the Painter-Stainers Guild

Summer Solstice
copyright Peter Clossick

Lewis Hazelwood-Horner - He's a graduate of the London Atelier of Representational Art and had works in the ROI and LARA exhibitions at the Mall Galleries last week.

Salt in Tea
copyright Lewis Hazelwood-Horner

Nicholas Holmes - Nick has spent most of his time in the north in terms of art education and exhibitions. He was longlisted for John Moores Painting Competition in 2014.

How to photograph your art for a digital submission

As more and more art competitions and open exhibitions change over to digital entry, it's becoming more and more important to know how to photograph your artwork.

One thing I do know from the very many images of artwork that I see on people's blogs / websites / Facebook is that lots of people do NOT know how to produce a good quality image which

• avoids photographic distortions
• loses the grey background which should be white 
• shows the colour accurately.

You can scan your work or you can photograph it - but whichever approach you use you need to do your homework about how to:

• avoid common problems
• make your work look like it does in reality

Photographing artwork

One of the benefits of digital submission is that everybody and his or her spouse has asked the competition organisers how to produce a good quality image!

There's a limit to how many questions that organisers get asked before it seems like a good idea to produce a good quality advice note! So - what the very large art competitions have got really good at is producing documentation and videos showing people what to do.

So what follows is not me explaining how to photograph artwork - it's the people who run the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy and the people who run the BP Portrait Award!

Royal Academy of Arts

• Video Tutorial: How To Photograph Your Work
• How To Photograph Your Work (PDF)

National Portrait Gallery | BP portrait award

• How to Photograph your Work (PDF which you can download)

Eliminating grey paper which should be white

These are a couple of posts I did back in 2009 which come out for an airing every so often. They tackle the perennial problem of photography which produces grey paper.  Both reference Photoshop Elements (at the time) and how to get the grey back to white.

• Correcting colour: How to stop your white paper looking grey 04 Jul 2009 How to use Levels in Photoshop Elements to tweak RGB profiles and stop white paper looking grey in drawings.
• Correcting colour: another way to stop your white paper looking grey 18 Jul 2009 Another way to use Photoshop Elements to stop white paper looking grey in drawings.

Scanning artwork

The main advantage of scanning artwork is that it gives a very even colour - but only so long as the artwork is completely flat and fits onto the platten. That's fine if your work is smaller than A4 and not if it's bigger - unless you want to invest in a good quality A3 scanner.

When scanning you need to use at least 300 dpi - and that means you need to check the scanner resolution before you use it.

More about scanning in a subsequent post.

Links to related content

• Preparing images for publication in a book #1

How to become a member of an art society - Part 1

A lot of artists like to get the letters after their name which mean they are a signature member of a prestigious art society.  For many this also helps them to get a 'proper art gallery' to represent them.

However first you need to become a member of the art society - or an associate member.

This post is a plea to some of the more prestigious art societies to make the information about how to become a member rather more accessible. If there's one criticism I'd have about art society websites it's that they can be very biased towards members. This can mean they are not tested with respect to how well they provide information for their external audience. In some cases they provide information badly, in others they don't provide it at all - and very few provide the information simply and clearly.

So here's a round-up of how easy it is to find out how to become a member of various art societies in the UK.

the entrance to the Mall Galleries

I'm starting with the societies which are members of the Federation of British Artists based at the Mall Galleries as these are some of the oldest art societies in the UK.

Subsequent posts will be about other art societies.

FBA Societies - how to become a member

Below I provide a quick summary of:

• whether the "how to join" information exists online
• where to find it - and specifically whether there is a clear signpost on the home page
• whether or not the process is explained simply and clearly. 

New English Art Club

There is no dedicated menu item related to joining this club on the home page - which means searching for where it might be.

• However - there is in fact NO information whatsoever on the website about how to become a member on the website
• However the Enquiries Page does provide a a contact name address and email address for the person who looks after people interested in becoming members

One wonders why NEAC don't put the information on the website and reduce the burden on the Committee member who volunteers to deal with queries....

The Pastel Society 

The website is being updated and the one page they have up at present does not include the information. Hopefully the new website will!

Royal Institute of Oil Painters

There is no information on the website about how to become a member.

I'm aware that the website is in a process of transition - and hopefully this will be addressed in the near future.

Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours

The RI has a dedicated page in the main menu - How to Join. It is basic, short and very clear how the process works. It's a page which others could do with emulating!

It provides:

• a simple explanation of 
• how decisions are made on membership and 
• how the application process works
• a contact person and email address for queries

Royal Society of British Artists

This society has a dedicated page Joining the RBA

• It mixes up the criteria for admission with a description of the process (and the page could do with an edit to separate these out)
• However it's reasonably clear what artists need to do and how they can strengthen their application for membership

Royal Society of Marine Artists

There's a clearly signposted "Membership Queries" link to a dedicated page on the Home Page.

• This is a dedicated page providing detailed information
• The page is transparent in terms of:
• making it clear that your exhibiting record contributes to assessment of an application for membership
• the records that the RSMA keep on people who submit work via the open entry
• the two-stage process for moving from applicant to associate to member
• the fact that the membership panel changes each year (a very healthy sign of an art society which has thought carefully of the pros and cons of different approaches for assessment for membership)
• the emphasis the RSMA places on applicants understanding that it's about making a contribution to the life of the society and not just about being able to exhibit more paintings

Royal Society of Portrait Painters

There is no dedicated signpost on 'how to join' on the front page

• How to become a member of the RP is under the 'For Artists' menu item
• The description of the initial part of the process about becoming a candidate for membership is fairly clear 
• However it peters out once people have got to the 'Candidate' stage and there is no explanation of how the process works in terms of moving forward from 'candidate' to 'member'. Presumably this is explained in a letter to candidates but it would be very useful to ALSO have an outline on the website

Society of Wildlife Artists

The Membership Page is clearly signposted on the home page

• It's transparent about the three categories of membership - Artist, Associate and Honorary
• It provides a very full explanation of the costs and benefits for each category of membership - and provides the best explanation of all the societies in this respect. 
• The SWLA is the only society which is completely transparent about its annual membership fee online. Personally I think this is admirable as I'm guessing some individuals might think twice about applying for membership if they knew the financial commitment they were applying to incur!

Incidentally this is a society which places an emphasis on the Friends Membership - and it's probably no coincidence that it has a a considerable following and gets a healthy turnout to all its exhibitions, generally good sales.

This is a page which other art societies would do well to take a good look at.

Open Exhibitions by UK Art Societies

Admission to membership is heavily dependent on the submission of works via the open entry. You can find out more about how to do this in my page on this blog about UK National Art Societies: Open Exhibitions 2016

So you want to sell art from home?

Lots of aspiring artists want to sell art from their home. I've been wondering how many have thought through the implications of doing so when it goes beyond simply selling online and then wrapping up and posting artwork done at home.

Selling art from home - Things to think about

This is Selling Art from Home - a new page on my art business website. It aims to cover all the things you need to think about when retailing from home.

selling art from home - a word cloud

Working from home - in a paperwork sense - seems to be something that is now almost regarded as a new norm. Certainly many artists draw and paint in their own homes.

However any 'working from home' which involves retail and strangers visiting your home is a completely different enterprise.

At present, the NEW web page covers

• Pros and Cons of selling from home - who this approach is suitable for and the realities of the expenses and downsides to selling from home.
• Security - the essential need to think about the security of your home, your valuables and you and your family.
• Mortgage provider / Landlord - You may well need to get permission from your mortgagor or landlord if you change the use of part of your home so it's no longer only domestic.
• Insurance - you MUST 
• avoid invalidating any insurance cover you have for your home and contents. If you check the small print you'll normally find your premises must be used only for domestic purposes - and selling is not domestic! 
• think about the implications for insurance for third parties. 
• Tax - you MUST think about what making part of your home non-domestic does in relation to property and asset taxation.
• Health and Safety - why rules on health and safety apply to people you invite into your home re commercial transactions.
• Planning Permission - the reasons why you might need to seek planning permission.​

When I say MUST I mean there can be very real financial penalties for not observing the rules or losing your insurance cover if you mislead your insurer - which means no cover in the event of a claim. It's your choice - but ignoring the rules could be very expensive if you make the wrong choice.

I plan to extend the content of the page so that it also covers:

• Open Studios - practicalities and things to be careful about
• Storage of Art at Home - after you run out of wall space, how to avoid the art taking over the house

The rules outside the UK

I'm less familiar with the detail of rules outside the UK. If you have any useful information to share please leave a comment.

More about Art Business Info for Artists

If you'd like to hear more about news of developments on my art business website you can:

• EITHER subscribe to the NEW news blog for Art Business Info for Artists via the subscription options in the side column
• Or Get every blog post emailed to you when you click this link to Subscribe to Art Business Info. for Artists - NEWS by Email

Other pages about selling art

• A Guide to Art Dealers & Art Galleries
• A Guide to Art Agents, Art Buyers and Art Consultants

The reasons why frames for art change over time

I learned a few new things about framing art while writing this week's blog post Do frames help to sell art?

Today's post is also about framing and shares some facts you might not be aware of.

You can find the references to articles read in arriving at a wider knowledge of framing and framing choices at the end of the article.

The purpose of a frame

A frame has four main purposes. It serves to:

• support and protect the artwork
• make it easier to hang
• separates - and connects - the painting from its surroundings 
• enhance its presentation - and avoids our attention being distracted from the painting

Picture frames have traditionally been made out of wood. The type of wood and the design of the frame - and the way the wood is jointed and bonded - tells us a lot about 

• where a frame comes from, 
• the age of a frame and
• the expertise of the person who made it.

Frames Change

Frames change for four reasons:

• a change in technology
• a preference for buying new over trying to conserve
• a change in ownership
• a change in fashion

most of the frames on paintings in the Gallery are not original to the works they now surroundA Bounty of Frames | National Gallery of Art (Washington DC)

and

Throughout most of the modern (that is, post medieval) era, original frames were discarded whenever a painting changed ownership, and a new frame more suitable to the work of art's new surroundings was provided.Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

A change in technology

The Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design and their Manual a resource about art and its making has have a fascinating article about Framing Art and the Art of the Frame By Ingrid Neuman

Early artwork is most likely to retain its original frame

Between the 13th and 15th century art was typically painted on boards and the frame was an integral part of the woodwork and the artwork. Consequently where the painting has survived, it's very often the case that its frame has survived too.

There were three types of frames:

• Integral - Frame and painting were made of one piece of wood. The surface for the painting was hollowed out of a plank which provided the frame surround. 
• Semi-integral - This is similar to the integral frame except just the uprights were made of the same wood as the panel. It's a more unusual approach to framing.
• Engaged - the mouldings for the painting were made and attached by glue and nails to the board for the painting before the artist started to paint. The entire construction was then painted with gesso before the painting was started.

For more information read Early Frames: Integral, Semi-Integral, and Engaged

So if you are particular about what sort of frame is used by your artwork maybe you should start painting on boards? :)

Technology changes post 15th century

As technology changed - painting moved from board to canvas backed by stretchers - the frame became separate from the artwork.  From this point on artwork might have several changes of frame in its lifetime.

From 1800 in France, there was a move to find mechanisms for the mass-production of frames rather than carving frames one at a time. By the end of the 19th century, frames were being mass-produced and the artisan frame was a thing of the past.

Changes in approaches to conservation

In the past, many galleries have preferred to give a painting a new frame rather than try and conserve an older frame already attached to it.

Today reputable art galleries and museums will typically try to match any frame to the period of the painting - and if that means trying to conserve a frame which fits the period of the painting then this is what they will do

In addition, frames are also considered works of art in their own right and some now change hands for very large sums of money.

Change in ownership - the most frequent reason for a change of frame

Most art galleries and museums know that the paintings they exhibit are probably not in their original frames. It was traditional for a long time for the owners to put their stamp on their acquisitions by reframing them in the style of the present day.

The frames that we see on older paintings today in exhibitions in museums and art galleries have probably been chosen by an owner rather than the artist.
It's a tradition that still exists and one which pervades every part of the art market from investment art to wall art which is strictly decorative.

One of my framers told me a long time ago that the bulk of his business came from replacing frames on artwork. The collectors liked the artwork but the frame simply didn't fit in their home - and it had to go.

TIP: An artist should ask him or herself very serious questions about what sort of budget he or she should allocate to frames. Especially if the frame played no part in achieving the sale and is likely to be removed as soon as the purchaser gets the painting home. Think about it....

Changes in Fashion

The importance of changes in fashion should not be under-estimated. The design of frames has changed many times over the years.

Pictures have always been required to live unobtrusively among furnishings of a period not their own, and frames have always been the vehicle enabling them to do so.Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

What changes design is FASHION!

What changes frames is fashion coupled with the changes in technology and the movement from artisanal frame-making to mass production e.g.

• Black frames are associated with Dutch art and interiors of the 17th century
• Gilding became very fashionable in the era of the Baroque and the Rococo. 
• Frames became a lot flatter and simpler during the neo-classical era dating from the 1780s
• Post French revolution, mass-manufacturing approaches heavily influenced the production of frames. Hence cut lengths of lengths of moldings joined together replaced frames which were hand-carved.
• The use of the painted white frame became very popular in the late 19th century - particularly among the Impressionists.
• Contemporary frames today tend towards being very flat and unobtrusive
• Many contemporary works of art have no frames at all.

Fashion is one of the main reasons why artists of today need to pay attention to the nature of the changing environment and decorative fashion relating to the homes in which their artwork is likely to hang.

EXAMPLE: Once upon a time - not too long ago - we used to have huge ugly black boxes sitting in the corner of a sitting room - next to the huge black boxes which contained the stereo system. Today these have been banished from very many homes. People fell over themselves to buy very slim, very large televisions with a minimal frame - to hang on their wall. Plus music is now played by any number of other slimline devices. Hence - if you haven't changed the style of your frames in the last ten years now might be a very good time to take a long hard look at how decoration has changed.

The Artist's approach to framing 

We're told that the frame is really important to how a painting is displayed and yet.....

• most of the images of paintings that we see in books and online are the artwork alone - minus the frame. 

The market in images has no room for frames. Magazines, newspapers, exhibition catalogues and art books act as if they don't exist, cropping them out of reproductions even when the painters saw them as integral parts of their work.
Edge trimming | The Guardian

• I'm often really surprised when I see a painting in person - complete with frame - and it turns out to be something I wasn't expecting. It doesn't seem to fit the artwork - and this might well be because.....
• very many, if not most, of the paintings we see on display in art museums and galleries are not in their original frame (see 'changes in ownership' below)

For example - see the picture below (from the National Gallery's exhibition about Inventing Impressionism) of Monet's paintings of Poplars on the River Epte.

All the paintings are of the same subject by the same artist - but every single frame is different. Some suited the paintings better than others - with the overly ornate appearing to be very much out of sync with the subject and style of the painting.

To my mind some of these are examples of what can happen when paying a lot of money for a painting seems to equate to a vicarious need to put the fanciest gilt frame on it to signify its value.

Five of the series of paintings of Poplars on the Epte by Claude Monet

By way of contrast, in 1895, Monet chose to exhibit another series of paintings - of Rouen Cathedral at different times of day - in a series of frames which had been made two hundred years earlier

Many of them are displayed today in their original frames - as chosen by Monet - in the Musee d'Orsay. You can see my photo of them from my visit in 2009 below.

Three views of Rouen Cathedral by Claude Monet

Painters design their own frames

I'm guessing that a lot of us are not aware of the artists who did take an interest in how their work was framed.

The article "'Pictures properly framed:' Degas and innovation in Impressionist frames" by Elizabeth Easton and Jared Bark in The Burlington Magazine. September 2008) tells us that

(Degas) was the most inventive and energetic frame designer; over forty profiles exist in his notebooks, spanning several decades, from the 1850s until the 1880s, with a concentration from the late 1870s until the mid-1880s

Looking at European Frames: A Guide to Terms, Styles, and Techniques By D. Gene Karraker - which you can read on Google Books - tells a story of how artists took control of how their paintings were framed.

EXAMPLE: Impressionist and post-impressionist

The Impressionists made radical changes in both the style and the colour of their frames Looking at European Frames By D. Gene Karraker

• in the 3rd Impressionist exhibition in 1877, Degas and Pissaro both exhibited their work in simple white frames 
• Whistler advocated the use of white frames to enable works to stand out better
• Paul Gauguin carved his own frames
• Van Gogh once painted a frame to match the dominant colour of the painting

The Bark Frameworks blog has a number of fascinating blog posts about how Degas framed his pastels

• Frames for Three Degas Pastels (Part 1 of 2) - 
• this provides a protocol for determining an appropriate frame

First, we look to the artist’s own preferences; then, to those of his contemporaries and peers. Finally - especially if examples of these are few - we look to those of dealers and collectors at the time.

• it also shows you the sketches made by Degas for the profile of a simple frame

• Frames for Three Degas Pastels (Part 2 of 2) 
• this shows you how mouldings have been made from the sketches Degas made of profiles for frames and what the frames look like.

By way of contrast, Cezanne was not in the least bit interested in how his paintings were framed and seemed very happy to leave decisions about framing up to his dealer Vollard.

More information:

• A Bounty of Frames | National Gallery of Art (Washington DC)
• Impressionist exhibitions in Paris | Visual Arts, Cork
• What Shape Frame?