What an Experience at my first Bath Art Fair
The tenth Bath Art Fair has been the brainchild of https://www.alceharfield.com who gathered together 95 artists from Britain and further afield to display their art for three days at the Bath Pavilion , a beauitful venue on the banks of the Avon in Bath city centre.
It was worth all my efforts to put together my creative output from the last five years. I have had a great new experience with lots of interest and art conversations about my watercolour landscapes and also my honeybee art. In particular I loved discussing exploring the effects of light on trees and transient cloud formations and how to capture them using the limitations of watercolurs. I also liked to explain to the less informed my enthusiasm for the use of fluis acrylics for big Scottish skies and the movement of water in my compositions.
A proud as punch artist !
These are my favourites
My first purchases of the Art Fair on the first private viewing evening were my honeybee greeting cards which are high quality prints presented as 15 x 15cm images that I have painted from my own original photographs. I am proud to say that these same prints as a series of four different bee poses won first prize in the Gloucestershire Honey Bee show held on Saturday 21st February.
Some of the income will help to raise funds for my local South Gloucestershire Beekeepers Association and some will be donated to my chosen conservation charity Friends of the Earth. As well as my beautiful honey bees, I also intend to paint and record images of other wild bees. The two types (genera) of bees we all know are Apis (honeybees ; one species in the UK ) and Bombus (bumblebees, of which 24 species in UK, 7 common). Solitary bees are less well recognised although we have about 256 species in the UK. Unfortunately 25 species of our solitary bees have now been recorded as extinct in the UK.
I therefore feel I have a duty to use my art and it’s message to not only promote the practice of beekeeping but also to heighten awareness to the fragile existence of these other crop and flower pollinators that are essentially vital to our own future wellbeing.
My first client is happy with her honeybee greeting cards
I was delighted to give real joy to a young Scottish couple who grew up near Edinburgh where I lived for 30 years. I was able to provide them with a memory of Gullane in East Lothian where Rebecca's dad still lives. Not only did they get an affordable high quality Giclee print but I was able to frame their beautiful artwork while they waited. They can now take it to their new home and hang it immediately.
The stand was of sufficient size to accomodate 30 of my framed original watercolour landscapes and fluid acrylic landscapes that I have produced since I have been painting in earnest since 2021. I think I managed to display the variety and versatility of my artwork in a way that was not cluttered or overwhelming. I also provided review racks that contained another 20 original mounted watercolour landscapes, ready for framing on the spot if requred. There was also a range of Giclee prints of various sizes available for purchase.
I continue to seek ways through my artwork to convey the power and the fragility of nature. We all have a small but individually important contribution to make to the future health and survival of our planet and all the life upon it, plant life, animal life and our own human lives.
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