This year's Open Studios Ayrshire event will be launched at the Dick Institute, in Kilmarnock, on Thursday 24th March, 6.00 till 7.30. If you want to know more - or if you're planning to visit the artists and their studios, do put the date in your diaries and come along to find out more about the forthcoming event.
Alan's studio, in Kirkmichael, will be open to visitors from Friday 22nd - Monday 25th April. There will be a bus to transport people around Carrick - and here in the village our beautiful pub will be open for lunches as snacks, as well as our community run village shop and tearoom. If the weather is good - and we hope it will be - you could also take in a walk around this beautiful conservation village, or go and see our historic kirkyard with its 'Covenanter's Grave'.
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Last Saturday we attended the preview of this year's forthcoming Open Studios Ayrshire - Alan will be participating in a big way, so first of all, put the weekend of 22nd - 25th April in your diaries. (Springtime!) Alan's studio will be open for visitors, whether you want to browse or buy or both, during the whole weekend. You can visit lots of Ayrshire studios and mini exhibitions throughout the weekend and some transport will be available. The preview show is on at Rozelle for a whole month - in the beautiful main house. There's a cafe too, so you can have coffee and cakes when you've finished viewing. The exhibition takes up three big rooms, and is crammed with a variety of wonderful artworks by a wealth of Ayrshire based talent.
We'll be opening our studio, here at 38 Patna Road, in Kirkmichael, for a mini sale, next Sunday, 13th December, from 10.00 till 16.00. We'll have a good selection of artworks at bargain prices, including original art, framed and unframed, prints of all sizes and prices, greetings cards and a few calendars.
Browsers welcome. This will be a taster for the much bigger Open Studios Ayrshire event that Alan will be participating in next April, but also a good opportunity to find an interesting Christmas gift for that special person. Come along and see us! The little exhibition at Rozelle is over and now we're beginning to think about Christmas (aaargh) as well as working towards next year's Open Studios Ayrshire event in the spring - I have some big ideas about this - quickly followed by a month's exhibition at Mauchline's wonderful Many Thanks cafe/gallery next June. 2016 promises to be an exciting year.
Meanwhile, just tidying the studio in preparation for some new work has been a major undertaking! From now until the middle of October, I have a showcase exhibition of a selection of my 'fishing boat' pictures at the Rozelle House and Gallery, in Alloway, not far from the birthplace of Robert Burns. It's a small show, half a dozen paintings, outside the tearoom (conveniently enough - and they serve nice coffee!) All the pictures are for sale, so if you're within easy travelling distance, do go along and have a look and let me know what you think. The weather is fine at the moment, and promises to be good at the weekend too - so you could have a grand day out.
My current obsession with fishing boats seems to be paying off. The picture above has had a lot of admiration but it was a pleasure to paint! Anyway, I have now got a couple of interesting small exhibitions lined up: one at Rozelle House - the space outside the cafe there - from mid September to mid October - and then next year, a whole month's exhibition in the lovely cafe/gallery at the cross in Mauchline, part of a wonderful gallery called Many Thanks. That is scheduled for next June which seems a long way off, but will no doubt come around quickly! I'll keep you posted. And over the winter, I'll be working on some more 'rural' pictures particularly for Mauchline: working horses and perhaps more traditional agricultural themes. In between times, there will be next year's springtime Open Studios event - although at the moment, I'm not sure whether I'll be exhibiting here in the village, or decamping to Maybole's Carrick Centre or even the Burns Museum. Depends very much on health, mobility, and availability of wife to do the carrying!
I really can't seem to stop painting fishing boats these days. Probably because many years ago I was a trawler skipper and I love these old fishing boats of all kinds. If you like them too, you could do worse than visit the excellent Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther. Or buy one of my pictures or prints! I'm currently planning a showcase later this year and an exhibition in Mauchline next spring/summer. Meanwhile, I hope to get some of these fishing boat prints into my Etsy store in the next few weeks.
My wife, novelist and playwright Catherine Czerkawska, has spent most of today setting up a brand new Etsy shop for me. She'll be running it and effectively acting as my 'agent' but of course I'll be supplying all the work (and doing all the packaging and processing!) To begin with, I'll be selling mainly prints on there, although we're hoping to add some original artworks as well as greetings cards, as time goes by. You'll find the shop under the name of AlanLeesArtist. It'll be good to have a selection of my work for sale in one place.
I painted a couple of pictures of flowers for the Open Studios event. Unusually for me. Teasles and Sunflowers from our garden. I'm thinking of ordering these as prints, but have already had them made up as cards. I could have done with a lot more visitors over the OSA weekend. Sadly the bus transporting 17 people on the Sunday bypassed this village - that many people would have made all the difference. Whenever people see the work, they generally like it and even buy it! But getting people to travel outside Ayr is so difficult. Not for the first time, I wish I could move my studio lock, stock and barrel to somewhere more appreciative of art.
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