Audience Feedback....Birmingham Open Studios 2022

Studio view

I welcomed visitors to my studio last weekend as a participating artist in the Birmingham Open Studios event across the city (although most of the artists participating seem to be based in South Birmingham, my neck of the woods). I enjoyed it. Friends and strangers came, and I enjoyed discussing my work and sharing my studio space. It had been a bit difficult to tidy too much with me being on crutches, but at the same time I didn’t really want to: if I was a visitor I would have enjoyed looking ‘behind the scenes’ of the artist and the work. So comments were made about my large, unruly palette, what paints I used, the canvasses in preparation and the many, many brushes. 

I also talked a lot about the subject matter too: my conviction in looking in ‘your own backyard’ for inspiration. I had chosen to display paintings based in Kings Heath where I live to emphasise this and thinking they may have local interest-and also about the importance of just trying to make the work you felt you needed to make without thinking too much about an audience, as this is where problems can often lie. These are conversations I started at art school, and never really go away. Of course, you are just making the art you need to make. And yet…it would be a bit disingenuous to say mental notes are not taken of comments that are made, observing what paintings seem to ‘land’, which postcards sold, and which do not. But at the end of the day, from my experience, these things are entirely unpredictable. Every viewer brings something of themselves as to why they may be attracted to a certain piece. These things are certainly not universal, so it's best to carry on regardless.

'Grounded II', oil on canvas, 40 x 30cms, 2021

Many of the visitors to the studio had found their way there attracted by my painting of the car in snow that had been in the brochure (above) That was a surprise to me, although I have always been pleased with this piece and another that accompanied it (below). I sold both and could have sold that first one three times over. 

'Grounded III', oil on canvas, 60 x 50cms, 2021

Postcards for sale ( a new thing...)

I also sold a small studio still life and a small ‘lorry park’ landscape. I also sold an etching (these are now becoming consistently popular at exhibitions), and nearly all of the postcards I had made, What a good idea these were…