I need to take a break - before my hip does!

I'm currently trying to deal with and sort out some health issues which have cropped up recently and which I need to understand better and also get addressed.

So I'm having a bit of a break - while you're all on your summer holidays and/or watching the Olympics! :)

It's essentially a progression of my Osteoarthritis - which to date has been defined as:

• severe OA: bone on bone in ankle - sorted via the Ankle Fusion Surgery
• severe OA: bone on bone in shoulder - I need a shoulder replacement
• pain in right hip - back at the end of 2021, both hips were x-rayed before the ankle surgery and it was determined I had osteoarthritis in my hips too. Essentially this meant "do nothing but keep under review"

bilateral degenerative changes in the hip joints with lateral osteophyte formation and reduction in joint space.

Image courtesy of OrthoInfo

However, something changed radically and very suddenly recently.  Maybe a big chunk of cartilage has broken off? My right hip is now making me very stiff at night, tries really hard to collapse and generally inhibits/prevents me from walking at night or early morning. I sometimes cannot move. It's rather like walking on glass. I'm now very concerned about falling at night.

I think maybe the amount of time I was on my feet standing during a couple of exhibitions / private views in June and July has maybe triggered it - so I now need to be VERY careful.

The odd thing is I'm more or less OK if I'm walking during the day - which I do every day for my ankle and hip (as per NICE recommendations for those with osteoarthritis). In fact, the fact I'm mobilising during the day is entirely due to NOT sitting down and mobilising during the day. 

• doing regular and consistent exercise, even though this may initially cause pain or discomfort, will be beneficial for their joints
• long-term adherence to an exercise plan increases its benefits by reducing pain and increasing functioning and quality of life

However the walking  and getting up and down and doing things (e.g. housework) on an hourly basis takes up a LOT of time and makes finding time for writing a tad more difficult!

BUT I'm now finding it very, very difficult to walk at night or early morning after sitting or lying down - as in I'm incredibly stiff, can barely move at times and can only walk with difficulty, hanging on to stuff! The prospect of falling and maybe fracturing my hip is a very real concern. 

I'm slapping on the Voltarol, have started taking painkillers again and am also doing specific exercises. Plus we're thinking about installing proper rails and me using a frame at night.

Bottom line I need to get my hip scanned again - I suspect I've moved to bone on bone - and work out with the doctors what's the best way forward. Which I very much suspect will probably be injections while I wait for a hip replacement.

Plus I've got some other issues which need sorting which are also complicating matters.

I'll be back by September - maybe sooner.

Call for Entries: ING Discerning Eye 2024

I've been covering the ever popular and unusual ING Discerning Eye 2024 exhibition for years. 

In 2024, the exhibition will be 

• at the Mall Galleries from Friday 15 to Sunday 24 November 2024 and 
• unsold work will remain online until the 1 January 2024 - making it available for all those looking for small artwork presents for Christmas!

ING Discerning Eye 2023
small 2D artworks on the wall and small 3D artworks on the plinths

About the ING Discerning Eye

Like most decent art competitions, it has 

• a reputable backer 
• The Discerning Eye is a visual arts focused educational charity. Its principal activity is to hold a rather unique annual exhibition 
• the exhibition is sponsored by ING Bank. Hence it is known as the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition.
• offers prizes - including the ING Purchase Prize, worth £5,000. Awards will be given out to the winners in a prize giving at the start of the exhibition.
• been running since 1999.

I've been covering it since 2007. (You can find blog posts - and sketches - on this blog going back to 2007 - see below!) In that time, I've also seen artists who have done well in this exhibition do well subsequently e.g. gallery representation! It's a really great way of getting noticed.

Visual language 
(some may recognise the model - at the 2007 ING Discerning Eye exhibition)
8" x 11", pencil and coloured pencil in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

So what makes it different?

What's different about the ING Discerning Eye Competition and Exhibition?

The three key differences are:

• ALL the artwork is small
• the six selectors change every year AND each selector curates their own exhibition. In effect, there are six small exhibitions across the three galleries at the Mall Galleries by:
• two artists
• two curators
• two collectors

The selectors are solely responsible for their own selection; selection is not by committee.

• Selectors can also invite artists to exhibit as well as selecting artwork via the open entry BUT the selectors must choose at least 33% of their section from the open submission.

The exhibition comprises both publicly submitted works and works independently selected by six prominent figures from different areas of the art world: two artists, two collectors and two critics. Each section is hung separately to give each its own distinctive identity. The impression emerges of six small exhibitions within the whole.

I'd add a fourth difference. The implication of artwork being small is one might expect it to be also more affordable.  Artists who price high, for no good reason (eg having sold at that price regularly in the past being the best one) will just incur costs and are unlikely to sell.

You can see the standard of the artwork included in last year's exhibition in albums on my Facebook Page

ING Discerning Eye 2023

• Artwork chosen by: Eliza Gluckman Chris Levine Ian 'H' Watkins
• Artwork chosen by: Julian Wild, Tony Adams

Who can enter?

The ING Discerning Eye Exhibition is open to artists resident in the UK only.

What can you enter?

All works must be 

• an original creation by the artist
• within the maximum size limit of 50cm including frame.
• for sale.

Acceptable artwork/media includes paintings, drawings prints (including prints from i-pad drawings), photographs, and sculptures.

Work previously submitted is inadmissible. 

How to enter

Call for Entries: Royal Society of Marine Artists

You might think the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists is just for artists who paint boats - and hence a very niche marketplace - but you'd be wrong. 

Indeed, in my opinion, it's well worthwhile checking out what sort of artwork is acceptable in this exhibition - which attracts a lot of collectors.

The Call for Entries for the next annual exhibition closes at 12 noon on Friday 26 July - so plenty of time to check out whether any of your artwork fits with their criteria and get an online submission completed!

You can check out my review of the last annual exhibition here - Review: 78th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. It includes links to my albums of photos of the exhibition on my Making A Mark Facebook Page

The RSMA leads the way by being:

• the OLDEST marine art society
• the BIGGEST marine art society - in terms of members
• the ONLY marine art society with an online exhibition which opens before and continues after the gallery exhibition.

This is an exhibition which generates a decent level of sponsorship of various awards valued at £10,500.  
 

What is the criteria for entries?

What's the scope of subject matter?

It's NOT just about boats!

The Royal Society of Marine Artists seeks submissions of art inspired by the sea and marine environment, including harbours and shorelines, traditional craft and contemporary shipping, creeks, beaches, wildlife - in short anything that involves tidal water.

• Subject matter MUST be: 
• essentially marine in nature, 
• relating in some way to tidal waters of the world; 
• Subject matter MAY be: topographical, historical, still life, and figure painting are all welcomed.
• Works relating to non-tidal rivers, inland lakes and waterways etc. are NOT ACCEPTED. 

The RSMA Annual Exhibition in 2023 - in the East Gallery

What can you submit?

In reality, most are paintings with some drawings and sculpture and few prints.

• Number of artworks: up to six works - but note that a maximum of four might be selected. Typically it's more often one or two for people new to the exhibition
• Size of artwork: Works should be no larger than 2.4m along the longest dimension.
• Acceptable media: 
• Paint: Oil, acrylic, watercolour, 
• Prints: original prints of any media, 
• Drawings: eg pastels, graphite, charcoal
• 3D/Sculpture
• mixed media, textiles
• Age of artwork: submit new work not previously exhibited
• Essential: All works must be an original creation by the artist
• Sales: 

• All works must be for sale. 
• There is a minimum price per work of £600 - which I said was a BIG mistake last year - and I believe sales were reduced as a result
• Prices for prints should start as 
• framed £325, 
• unframed £200.

In 2021, the vast majority of sales (80-85%?) are artworks were priced at less than £1,000. There were a LOT of buyers for small artwork priced at less than £500.

Last year, 419 artworks were listed in the catalogue. Of these 354 remain listed as unsold on the online website for online sales.

Who can submit entries?

Portrait Award 2024: Artists with their paintings

Two portraits in the HSF Portrait Award 2024

If your portrait IS selected for the Portrait Award 2024 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, you can expect the following might happen

• your portrait will be seen by over 200,000 people visiting the exhibition in London.
• your CV will be very much enhanced by selection for this prestigious exhibition. This then helps your career when trying to interest art galleries in your work
• your website will get enquiries for portrait commissions - (so make sure you have one and it provides decent information about commissions and how to contact you!)
• you get photographed with your painting for this blog post!

What follows is my annual post about "Artists with their Paintings" - all 33 of them!

Somehow I seem to have photographed more artists than ever before! So this is an ABSOLUTELY MAMMOTH BLOG POST!  It's only taken two days. I had to forego my walk today to get it finished!!

Lots of photos and lots of profile info about each artist - differentiating between those who are first time exhibitors and those who are have been selected for the Portrait Award in more than one occasion. 

This is where the painters in this post currently live.

EUROPE

• UK: England - Wendy Barrett, Oliver Bedeman, Tm Benson, Jane Brodie, Morag Caister, Laura Carey, Catherine Chambers, Alan Coulson, Peter Davis, Estelle day, Peter James Field, Ruth Fitton, Lewis Hazlewood-Horner, Emily Ponsonby, Carl Randall,  Charlie Ratcliffe, Ray Richardson, Ilara Rosselli del Turco (originally Italian),Michael Slusakowicz (originally Polish), Antony Williams
• UK: Northern Ireland and Ireland - Comhghall Casey, Shane Keisuke Berkery, Daniel Nelis
• Germany: Dan Gaasch, Massimiliano Pironti
  
• Russia: Sasha Sokolova

AFRICA

• South Africa: Emily Stainer

ASIA

• Japan - Shinji Ahari

NORTH AMERICA

• USA: Kyle Hackett, Rebecca Orcutt, George Shapter

What my photographs help you to do - which the online gallery does NOT - is to see the size of the painting relative to the artist who painted it

What the profiles help you with - If you've never entered the Portrait Award you can get a good sense of whether you're working at a similar level. The level of information varies with 

• whether I remembered to photograph the label (not always - and the website very unhelpfully neglects to provide the information)
• how much an artist chooses to share (and sometimes overshare). 

I try to pick out the useful information and the good bits and any themes which seem to emerge.

Portrait Award 2024: Where self portraits change to being portraits in interiors

Artists with their Paintings

The selection of the artists photographed for this post is not scientific - and is certainly not complete.  Essentially they are 

• those who were at Awards Ceremony or the Press View 
• AND I managed to spot their "Artist" Blue Badge (Awards) or small red oblong sticker (Press View) declaring them to be an artist. 
• AND they didn't leave before the end of the Press View!

(Tip: never ever hide your label at a Press View. Plus stick to the Artist Button - they're much easier to see!)

The narrative below includes reasonably LARGE PICS - but you have to

• click the pic to see the LARGE VERSION 
• click the link below the narrative - to go to the artist's website. Details of where you can see the exhibition are at the end of the post - together with the same post in previous years (2015-2018)

I'll also be posting these photos on Facebook in an album now I've completed this post. But given it's taken two days - I might have a break first!!

There are links to their websites or other social media sites embedded in their names.

UK - ENGLAND

Wendy Barrett

Wendy Barrett - who is actually a lot more smiley than her self portrait
Self (2022) Oil on stretched canvas
55cm x 40cm

Wendy Barratt is a first time exhibitor who has risen to prominence in the last 18 months. Her self portrait which got her into Series 10 of Sky Arts Portrait Artist iof the Year - which she won - also got her selected for this exhibition too! Her preliminary drawing was straight to canvas. She uses a rigger brush to emphasise certain colours and tones.

In recent years, the winning of a portrait competition with a high profile has typically paid off in a major way for the winners - and I now keep seeing Wendy's artwork being exhibited everywhere, from her commission hanging in the NPG to a basement in Brixton where she was exhibiting as a brand new member of the Contemporary British Portrait Painters. 

She has also been an Art Tutor for over 25 years and set up the Drawing Room in Worthing to host weekly life drawing classes - which she kept going via Zoom during Covid! This is a story about how she got Back to Life.

Education: BA (Hons) in Design and Communication Media, Manchester Polytechnic

Recent achievements include:

• Winner of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2023 (see Wendy Barratt is Portrait Artist of the Year 2023 (Series 10)
• Her prize - a £10,000 commission painting of Dr Jane Goodall currently hangs in Room 33 of the National Portrait Gallery (see PAOTY 2023: Commission Painting of Dr Jane Goodall. 
• 2023-2024: Exhibited in Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition

Oliver Bedeman

Oliver Bedeman

Oliver Bedeman's painting is in oil on glass - which means he paints the entire portrait in reverse, starting with the eyelashes! The technique of back painting glass dates back to the Romans and is a method that was once described by Cennino Cennini who wrote the "how to" on late Medieval and early Renaissance painting. It's acquired various terms since then including Verre églomisé. 

If you leave part of the glass without any paint, then you can see shadows from the paint on the rear wall - see below for an example. This catches people's attention and then amazes them when they realise the entire painting has been painted backwards!

Note the shadows on the wall
behind the arm and the head

 

He has painted T'nia Miller who is an actress. He contacted her via Instagram and then arranged a sitting at her home where he took reference photographs and made drawings

Recent Achievements: 

• 2022: Artist in Residence at Dumfries House, Scotland,
• 2021: First Prize, Bath Society of Artists, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
• 2020: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy,
• 2019: Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, Shortlisted
• Royal Drawing School Tutor - Young Artists Programme at the Ashmolean, Oxford

Previously shortlisted: BP Portrait 2018

Education: Postgraduate Drawing Year, Royal Drawing School 2007-08 ; B.A (Hons) Fine Art Painting, University of Brighton 2004-07.

Tim Benson

Antony Williams wins HSF Portrait Award 2024

At the revamped National Portrait Gallery on Tuesday evening, Egg Tempera painter Antony Williams was announced as the winner of the very prestigious £35,000 Portrait Award - now sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills, a law form and long time sponsor of the NPG.

We were all very thankful to return to the formal Awards Ceremony, given the combination of the refurbishment of the National Portrait Gallery and Covid meant we hadn't had an Awards Ceremony since 2015 - and five years is a very long time to wait....

I'll comment on the differences I noticed in a future post - but first the awards....

The HSF Portrait Award opened to the public at the NPG today and continues until 27th October 2024. It is however not where it used to be due to the reconfiguration of the gallery. You'll find it at the far end of Floor 2. It's free to enter.

HSF Portrait Award - First Prize (£35,000): Antony Williams

Antony Williams winning first prize is a testament to all those who are willing to keep trying and to keep entering and who can wait 29 years to win the first prize!

Winner of the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024

Jacqueline with Still Life by Antony Williams RP NEAC

I, for one, will very much miss seeing Antony's wonderful egg tempera portraits in this competition - I've seen seven of them. He is an absolute master of the egg tempera medium and has won a number of other awards during his career to date. 

Antony is an artist who has previously had his artwork selected to hang in the Portrait Award Exhibition on 10 previous occasions (in 1995, 1998, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020) and, notably, won Third Prize in 2017.

I had a chat with him recently and told him that I confidently predicted he would win. He does after all fall very neatly in to the category of one type of winner - who is selected on a regular basis over the years and has previously won either second or third prize - or the Young Artist Award. I simply could not see him being shortlisted for an award this time and not winning (although Michael Gaskell will attest to the fact it does happen!). I have to say I was much more confident that he would win than he was, although that might be because he's had so many entries accepted which have not won! He does know I crunch the numbers though....

As I remarked in my blog post about the Shortlist for The Portrait Award 2024 Antony had become the last of "the regulars" who has been not yet won this Award.

He and I both knew he had won as soon as they began to introduce the second prize winner. As soon as the word "Florence" was said, I knew he'd won it. I have to say he was very calm about it all. I found him in the crowd with my iPhone and was taking pics of him waiting for him to be announced as the winner of the First Prize. Apparently some of those in his party also realised he had won and were a tad more emotional about it!

The next day I got a pic of him with his winning painting of one of his regular models and some of the still life which he paints regularly. I thought it was a really interesting composition. It presents a really interesting interrelationship between the different objects in the picture plane and enhanced the potential for narrative explaining how they came about.

Jacqueline with Still Life with Portrait Award Winner 2024 - Antony Williams

Egg Tempera on wooden board;

1222cm x 668cm (48 inches x 26 inches)

The Judges were impressed with Williams confidence and mystery of the egg tempera medium. They felt the composition was nuanced and surprising. The painting sustains your attention, encouraging the viewer to unpack and make sense of the connections between Jacqueline and the still life elements in the background, creating an intriguing and enigmatic portrait.

Still life is in fact one of Antony's main interests and I think most of the paintings I've seen from him in the past in this competition had some element of still life in them. It helps to tell the story of the artist, the model and the place where they are both working. However he does also paint very intricate interlaced paintings of heads as well. His website is well worth a good look (see link embedded in his name at the top) to see why egg tempera is so very different from painting in oils or acrylics.

I've always been attracted to it because of the scope to create optical mixes of colours, and Antony told me about the way he approaches a painting like this. I have to tell you there's a lot more sitting underneath all the various mark-making than you might think!

More about egg tempera

I now know where I went wrong when I did an egg tempera course at the V&A! Below I've listed the egg tempera posts I've written for all those now interested in the media who want to know more - which also references famous paintings in egg tempera

• Egg Tempera Class at the V&A: The support and the drawing
• Egg Tempera Class at the V&A: the pigments and the grinding
• Egg tempera class at the V&A: painting with egg tempera
• plus An egg tempera day - which is about a workshop with another egg tempera painter 

Second Prize (£12,000): Isabella Watling

The second Prize of £12,000 was awarded to Isabella Watling for Zizi.