So This is Christmas

..And what have you done? Another year over…’ The lyrics to the start of one of my favourite Chrismas pop songs by John Lennon.

So now, in between Christmas and New Year, a little time for reflecting on my past artistic year. It started with learning how to and building this website. This took a while as I had to get my head around wordpress but it is a vast improvement on my old one – www.sarahmorleyfineart.com, which is no longer in existence now.

My exhibition ‘Spirit of Place’ at ‘Art My Treasure’ gallery in Wilmslow ended early in January 2017 and after that I started to think and plan my next exhibition ‘Inspiring Derbyshire’ – this happened in October and November, when I had an exhibition of  the paintings from three of the walks featured on my bloghttps://inspiringartwalkswithsarahmorley.blogspot.co.uk/  and ran two very successful workshops on knife painting and approaches to mixed media.

Some of the work from the exhibition has gone to new homes, including  ‘Foxgloves By The Wall’. Below is a photo of me with some of the paintings behind from the ‘Cown Edge’ walk featured in the blog, and below that ‘Foxgloves By The Wall’.

 

I have loaded the paintings and drawings from one of the walks – the walk around Lumsdale Falls onto this website, such as Lumsdale Falls In the Sunlight and  Blue Water By The Bridge and  charcoal and pastel drawing which are featured in Works on Paper section of this paper. I will soon be uploading many more of the Derbyshire paintings and mixed media work onto this website. Of course if you are near Stockport you are very welcome to visit me in the studio to view.

I have recently started uploading much more of my work onto the international Artfinder website. This is primarily to increase my visability as an artist. But the work featured on Artfinder will usually be available on this website as well, often at a slightly more favourable price.

My work has also featured in several group shows this year – ‘The Thread That Binds Us’ in May in Stockport Art Gallery and touring to Liverpool Cornerstone Gallery in August – a group exhibition of Mersey Corridor artists responding to the theme of the River Mersey as being ‘the thread that binds us’. That was a fantastic experience. Also on two other occasions at Stockport Art Gallery for the Open Exhibition in July, and again over this Christmas I have work up as part of the Stockport Art Guild. I also participated in the Open Exhibition for Castlepark Arts Centre in Frodsham Cheshire where my two paintings were judge Highly Commended and I was given a Commendation and prize money for my painting ‘Sea Over Rocks’ shown below.

 

I had a great time in August, travelling around in Scotland – I visited Skye, Harris, Sutherland and The Orkneys and saw some amazing sights. Paintings from this trip will be featured in my next major exhibition which is to be held in May and June at Castlepark Arts Centre, Frodsham, from 16 May to 25 June.

Here is my studio as I left it for the Christmas holidays – you can see some of the Scottish seascapes drying on the easels.

Recently I have been getting really proficient in sending painting to the US – two have been shipped during December, and I sold another painting, ‘Rough Sea at Whitby’ on Christmas Eve, so this is soon to be on its way over  to Chicago.

And so to the New Year – As the song goes:-

‘Lets hope its a good one

Without any fear’.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year!