So, Artweeks is over. In fact, about a month has passed since I took the (for me) giant leap of displaying my paintings in public for the very first time. To say it was a week of highs and lows was almost inevitable, I think, but more than enough time has passed for me to view it objectively!
The lead up the exhibition was very hectic with lots of prep work going on - varnishing, label-making, and some last-minute postcard/greeting card/business card ordering. Top tip - don’t leave this until the last minute. Of course, I exaggerate when I say last-minute - it was about two weeks before, I think. But I had a bit of a panic when the first batch of cards were too dark. My fault, I think, for not preparing the files carefully enough. So, there was some frantic file-fiddling and re-ordering, and luckily the second batch arrived in time and were much better.
But in amongst all the hasty preparation, I was amazed when a very nice American lady contacted me via my website contact form and asked if she and her husband could view my Radcliffe Camera painting. By an amazing stroke of luck, they were staying in Oxford in the hotel right next to Stanford House, so I was able to let them see the painting on Friday while I was setting up. They chose to purchase it along with the St Edmund Hall Quad painting. What a fantastic start!
The rest of the set up session on Friday went well and I was ready to go. The exhibition space was a lovely big room at the back of the Stanford House building with a whole wall of glass, allowing lots of light in from the beautiful courtyard outside. I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t have enough hanging space, but with some tables placed in the middle of the room for the smaller paintings and some easels I borrowed standing at the end, it was the perfect space.
Visitor numbers over the weekend were good, about 18-20 per day, which I gather is about average for Artweeks. Weekdays were a little quieter, but this is to be expected, of course. Now I know why some artists choose to limit the amount of weekdays they open! Most visitors were very complimentary and happy to chat. Some walked in, took a quick look round and left, but that’s fair enough - I know I have done the same! I had some visits from family, friends and colleagues too, which was a great morale-booster.
In addition to the amazing two-painting sale on the first Friday, our friends bought the Clovelly Cat painting, and I sold a decent amount of prints throughout the week. There were even more sales of the postcards and greetings cards, so I was really pleased that I had taken the time to get those right. So, overall, a pretty good week of sales for a first try!
I was conscious of the need to ‘look busy’ so that people didn’t feel I was hovering over them, so I set up my easel in the courtyard to try my hand at some en plein air painting of the courtyard with its lovely magnolia tree. This also helped to fill the inevitable periods of ‘dead time’ . But unfortunately my lack of experience and practise in this area was very apparent, and I struggled to get anything decent done. I think I was also conscious of the fact that people might walk by and look at what I was doing – but this is practically inevitable when painting en plein air, unless you find a very remote spot or do it in your back garden! Also, it goes without saying that slow and accurate is my favoured painting style, so standing out in the open having to put down paint quickly while the light changed was way outside my comfort zone. It made me appreciate that painting en plein air is an impressive skill that requires a lot of practice. I’d really like to take the time to improve my abilities in this area, but my Artweeks attempts left me disheartened.
This low mood was exacerbated by a very quiet last Sunday. Visitor numbers were pretty similar to the previous Sunday, but for some reason it seemed much quieter, perhaps because I was hoping for a busy end to the week. It was also a lovely day, but I don’t really think the weather played that much of a role in people’s decisions to visit. I was also pretty exhausted, which is no surprise.
So it was that my first Artweeks adventure ended on a bit of a low note, and I was somewhat demotivated for quite few days afterward. But with the benefit of a few weeks to reflect, I can see that it was an amazing experience with so many positive outcomes and invaluable lessons learned. And I gather from other artists that a post-Artweeks dip is very common after all the build-up and preparation, which is very reassuring.
It’s best to think that I have maybe caught a few eyes, sowed a few seeds, and that in the weeks or months to come, there may be a few ripples in my tiny pond.
So, that just leaves me to extend a massive thanks to the staff and students at Stanford House who allowed me to occupy the garden room for a whole week and kept popping in to see how I was getting on, and to all the visitors, family and friends who stopped by to say hello and kept me from going a little bit mad.
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