Christmas Posters

This isn't what I want to write about, as I have much more interesting people to talk about and

whose art I want to show, but I have these pictures to hand so it is easier to mention what I have been doing today.

Our Christmas opening is this weekend, like all exhibitions that we have there seems to be masses to do and no time to do it, this probably has something to do with the fact that I am very

disorganised and tend to get excited about many things at once and don't have time to calm down long enough to look "under my nose" and see what must be done next.

So, our invitations have gone out, advertisements printed, new work is here with more is on its way, there are journeys to undertake, displays to arrange, etc,etc, and still I haven't done a poster.

Something that Irene pointed out to me last night, of course I argued that we had time and that I was "on the case", but in truth it had been forgotten so this afternoon I tried out a few designs and made a print of each.

I find it very hard as we show such a variety of work and it is almost impossible to have a poster or invitation that will appeal to everyone.

I suppose in truth, myself I tend to want to go towards a "corny" old fashioned look, as for me that is what Christmas is all about, nostalgia, or maybe that's just an age thing.

But going for this look then wipes out the relevance of all the fantastic very contemporary work that we have and are receiving for the Christmas show and as a result I would probably lose a lot of customers who are after something modern and very different, so I have decided on about six different

posters starting with the three I have done today.

I like them all in different ways, the first features the incredible "fantasy" dress created by Louise Richardson [one of the nicest, most down to Earth and successful artists we show], it is a little like "Cinderella meets the Angel" and is truly beautiful, I just wish that a photograph did it justice.

The second picture is of an engraving by a very clever man who died in 1971, Meyer Eberhardt.

I love his work and we always try to have at least one of his pictures on display, the one in the poster is a favourite of mine.

Another favourite is the picture in the last poster, why you might ask?

Because it's one of mine.

I don't like showing my photographs as it feels like it is all about ego, and I honestly think as far as photography goes I lost mine long ago [only with photography that is] but as this one is so "Christmas'y" I thought "why not"?

It was taken in the village of Lavenham earlier this year and reminds me of Christmas as a child, or at least in the childhood of my imagination.

The last week has been one long blur of driving and collecting work from different artists.

It is such a shame that I had so many to visit and so little time to spend with each one, because visiting the artists at their homes, seeing their studio's and getting a small insight into their world is just about the only "perk" that I have found in this job.

I visited many people and time permitting I will get around to them all, but to start with I will mention the person who instigated the my mini-tour of England, that person is Jackie Morris.

Many people have asked where the image of the Hare at the top of the 'blog site' comes from,

well it is a slightly altered version of an original drawing by Jackie which we were lucky enough to have and then sell a few months ago.

I say lucky because Jackie has allowed us to be the only gallery that has some of her original pencil drawings on show.

As many people know Jackie is a very well known illustrator and author, and has more books to her credit than I can think to remember. Her latest 'Starlight Sailor' was published only last week [and if anyone wants a signed copy including a unique drawing with the signature, then give me a call].

Although many people don't know her name they would instantly recognize the work if they have been inside a bookshop in the last few years, as she creates the covers for the books of many

famous writers.

Well my visit to Jackie came about as she had told me "you are only getting more drawings if you come and collect them".

So I did.

It was a little bit of a literary journey as on the way I was able to visit the home and "writing shed" of my all time literary hero, Dylan Thomas.

Having visited his home, shed and grave almost 40 years ago with my girlfriend [now wife and mother to my children] I wasn't able to pass nearby without having another visit.

Sometimes things are better left as memories and this was maybe one of them.

Much as I loved seeing his home and the scenes and pub that he looked at and visited daily it was a little sad to see the village 'Laugharne' [or Milkwood as it became immortalized] changing and becoming part of the modern world, a little of the magic had vanished forever.

I will at some point [I promise] show a few of the pictures that I took of the places that hadn't changed and where a little of Milkwood lives on.

Above are paintings by Jackie and a picture of her. The very strange thing is, as I mentioned to her "you write very much like Dylan Thomas".

"It must be the Welsh air", she replied.

Maybe, who knows?

The last picture shows the inside of Dylan's "shed", complete with his last beer bottle.

Mike Pestell

It has been very unsettling day

Since opening the gallery I tend to think in terms of "past life" and "real life", although I have many good memories of my past life 

[working at Saatchi & Saatchi] I also have many bad ones, most of daily life seemed to be taken up with politics, worrying about

who was "stabbing you in the back" in order to climb another rung up the ladder, with not enough time spent on the actual work we were there to produce, and it was the production of the work that I found the most rewarding and enjoyable.

So with this my "new life" I have found it strange to be involved in another world with totally different people.

Now most of the time I deal with people who have a different set of values and I often think with a sense of amazement "these are my new work mates".

Instead of playing "cut and thrust" with life's political non achievers I am dealing with artists, sculptors, potters, jewellers, photographers, etc,etc, the list goes on, but one very important person in my life has been the picture framer.

That man was Mike Pestell.

More than anyone he was the person who marked the difference between the old life and the new.

He was a funny old bugger, although not that old, he worked from home in a large shed at the bottom of his garden.

What work that shed produced [or the man in it], all of his work came with a guarantee and the quality was second to none.

He always found time for everyone, and was the champion of many an artist.

I used to speak with him most days of the week, and would put the telephone down after a chat and think "this is my new life", just worrying about how a certain picture would look and how soon I could collect it.

I am told by many people that I am a "miserable sod" who rarely smiles and never laughs, but on many dark late winter evenings in

Mike's studio I would smile, and on occasion even laughed with him as he recounted stories about the different artists he worked with.

Well!

As you must have guessed Mike has died. Not passed away, he died after suffering a long and unexplained illness.

All through his illness he would urge me to bring him work, even though in my heart I knew he wasn't well enough to frame it

but he was convinced that he could still give me a better result than anyone else I might choose to use.

He tried with all his might to promote and champion me, and I know he was secretly proud of some of my photographs that he framed, he never told me but others did.

On one of the last occasions that we met he asked me to photograph "his" Church Windows. The idea was to sell the pictures to raise funds for the Church.

Today he was buried there, I was unable to attend the funeral and although sad that I wasn't there I know he will forgive me.

You helped change my life Mike, thank you.

Things are starting to get more exciting and hectic as the year draws towards its close,

the pressure is now on to get as much new and original work on display before Christmas.

I have many artists to tell you about and many to visit, but I will "try" to mention them as their work arrives or as I visit them.

Recently I have been having correspondence with an incredible sculptor who I had never heard of until a week or so ago, her name is
Eve Shepherd.

What I can't understand is that I hadn't found her before as her sculpture fits in so well with what we are all about. As it turns out she found us.

I can imagine her thoughts were very much "why haven't they been in contact with me?"

Had I known of her existence I would have been, I am searching all the time for people whose work I think will fit in with us, but they can be hard to find and at times it can be a little bit intimidating approaching

certain artists as their thoughts are only of London galleries.

Anyway,

Eve approached us and I am delighted to say that sometime before Christmas the first of her work shall arrive here. At the moment she is still sculpting it, which makes it even more exciting as we will be exhibiting work unseen before, so I thought that it might be interesting to show you pictures of her "work in progress", which can then be compared with the finished pieces that I will photograph when they arrive.

I will point out that the picture at the top is a finished piece, it's titled 'Alone'.

One of the biggest worries of having a gallery is trying to keep fresh work on show all the time.

Finding new artists is one of the greatest pleasures of doing what we do, but having found those artists, especially the good ones it then becomes a pressure to ensure that you can replace their work when it sells and also to keep the gallery in a state of flux, so that the

regular visitors will feel that they can always find something new.

As it approaches Christmas that can start to get even harder, as for many galleries this is their best selling period so they book as many artists as they can under the "umbrella" of Christmas Exhibition. I suppose we may be a little guilty of that, but mostly for us December is just a big excuse to indulge ourselves and show a larger mixture of the work by our favourite artists without the worry of it being a major event or themed exhibition. In truth this time of the year can be a little bit more fun for us and a little less pressure.

So the last week or so has had me traveling around the country collecting different work, and spending even more time [if that is possible] talking to artists giving them a "wish" list of things that we would love to show during the run up to Christmas.

So here are a few pictures of new work as it starts to arrive.

We do have much more work but these are the latest to be unpacked, the others I will include as I get around to photographing them, many of the artists will be familiar but for us that is what the Christmas exhibition is all about.

We have got art coming from some very new [to us] artists but I will show them separately as their work arrives.

The work shown above is all ceramic, which isn't strange as we are first and foremost a ceramic gallery, but for a lot of people this is a surprise because they had never realised that ceramics comes in so many different shapes and guises.

The first piece is one of Ross Emerson's unusual clocks. I don't know where his mind is but it is definitely in the same place as mine. They are all about fantasy, imagination and are so very childlike in the most delightful way, they make you feel young just by looking at them.

There are never two the same and it is a constant source of wonder "where can he go from here?" There is no second guessing his imagination and there seems to be no end to the varied paths it follows.

The second picture is of a plate by a woman who I consider to be one of the country's best potters, Maureen Minchin. She lives in a very remote corner of Scotland and seems to be virtually unknown in ceramic circles yet her following is World wide and the demand for her work far outreaches the supply. I would be content like many galleries to stock nothing but Maureen's pots, but that would never happen.

It often makes me smile when I visit one prestigious ceramic event or another to come across many named potters who are supposedly successful knowing that they have never heard of the

Maureen, but that is what she would expect. She is the most humble, talented and generous

potter I have ever been lucky enough to deal with, she is totally unaware of her incredible ability and truly thinks of herself as "just a potter" which is is in such contrast to so many others. Her pots are modestly priced [considering the amount of work involved] and she doesn't have aspirations above living the life of a potter in the Leach/Cardew tradition, and like them she employs as many local people [there aren't many where she lives] as she

can at the pottery. She is following tradition and wants to pass on her skills to benefit others.

I can't think of many potters doing that today.

The plate shown is a very modest piece and I know she would be embarrassed for me to boast about her and show something that wasn't her very,very best.

For me every piece is her best and I think many could learn by her example.

Lastly, but not least, is a very beautiful "Don Quixote" or 'A hard Days Night" as he calls it by Paul Priest. I met he and his partner Gaynor yesterday and I was encouraged to take whatever I liked. I loved everything but in the end followed my heart and left with the 'Knight' [and other pieces], there really is something about it that touches the soul.

I love it.

I thought that instead of talking about the gallery and the work in it that it might be a good

idea to let people get an idea of what it looks like. I have often tried to take pictures inside but

they never give a true impression, I know that if I put off waiting until I have 

photographs that I am happy with it will never happen so I am showing a few pictures that I took a while back.

They were taken at the time of a group ceramic exhibition so it's a case of "name that potter".

In truth the place never looks a great deal different to this as we always have pots on show and if not pots then ceramic sculptures.

The building itself is interesting and has a mixture of styles and periods.

Like most of Long Melford [the Village the gallery is in] it is a timber framed structure

although you wouldn't know this from the outside appearance as like the majority of the other

buildings it has been covered outside with brick.

If the outside 'veneers' were removed from the buildings what you would see would be a Tudor

"chocolate box" village, but for whatever reason the structures have been covered over at different periods in time.

So from the outside we are a 'Georgian' house and on the inside we are?

Well, I'm not really sure as it's a bit of a mixture, we have three fireplaces two of which are 'inglenooks', a reclaimed brick floor, a few new oak beams and plain plaster walls, underneath which is 'wattle and daub' which can be seen through a glass panel which was put in place just

to give people an idea of the age of the building.

It's not perhaps the best setting for contemporary art, but we like it and it is the very quirkiness of the place

that made us go for it. There are times when hanging pictures that I do think

"why didn't we go for a modern plain building"?

That aside, I suppose the odd mixture does suit my equally muddled mind.

The display areas we have tried to keep as plain as possible, and where possible have created 'sand pits' to exhibit work in.

Perhaps a bit of an outdated idea but I like it and after all "it's my party".

I am constantly trying to think of different ideas for displaying work and if possible I would love somehow to include water but I still haven't figured that one out yet.

I know there are lots of things that need to be changed and in time they will be, but the most important aspect that we want to create is an environment that people feel at ease coming into as I can't stand the "look but don't touch" atmospheres that you encounter sometimes.

I always want to sell the art we display but if people are happy to come in, feel relaxed and

just enjoy and talk about the exhibits then that gives me equal pleasure.

Not so long ago an old lady came in and spent about an hour and a half looking and asking questions. Before leaving she purchased a small pot and said "I'm sorry that I didn't spend much I will come back and talk to you again when I have some money". I told her to come back whenever and as often as she liked and that it didn't matter about buying anything as I myself couldn't afford to buy the very work that I show.

I explained that although I couldn't afford anything at least I had the pleasure of admiring and caressing some of these beautiful objects on a daily basis.

"Yes", she replied.

"You are just the curator. The curator of beautiful things".

She will never understand what pleasure her words gave me, someone understood how I felt.

So if anyone wants to come, admire and just talk, the door is always open.

Even when it's freezing. 

On Wednesday I went to London to visit the 'Affordable Art Fair', this is something I have long wanted to do but each year something else crops up and I never manage to go. I must admit that the prospect of going to the City is also something that deters me, which is strange after having spent most of my life working in various parts of London. I suppose that I have become something of a 'country bumpkin'.

The chances are that I wouldn't have made the visit this year but for the fact that I had to return

some of the incredible paintings by David Shanahan and a sculpture by Beth Carter, both who were showing there on different stands.

The fair is a very prestigious event and last night the private view was even more so, I enjoyed myself "rubbing shoulders" with the rich and famous and I would have had an even better time

enjoying the free cocktails had I not been facing such a long drive home.

It was a very 'interesting' evening and I'm glad that I went.

As a gallery owner I actually get very little time to visit other galleries and it becomes hard to gauge where you stand in the scheme of things. With our own gallery all that I can see each day are the things that are wrong and that bother me, and I have yet to sit back and think "this place is good", all the time I want to change and improve not just the quality of the work but the gallery itself. I think in terms of the gallery I will never be satisfied, but last night it put in

perspective for me the quality of the art we show. When I say 'art' by that I mean paintings, photography, sculptures, ceramics and just the general mixture of work that we are lucky to have and show.

Walking around for the third time at the Fair it finally occurred to me " we are better than most people here", which sounds very egotistical, but it's not that, it was about the artist/makers

that have taken a chance with us and believe in what we are trying to do, and it is the fact that they have the belief in us which makes it all possible, so a big thank you to those that have helped and stuck with us over the years.

For the first time, today back in the gallery I have thought " I think we are going to go somewhere".

All this aside, what was the most interesting for me at the Fair was a sculptor that I came across 'Antonio Lopez Reche' who was sharing a stand with some other sculptors.

Ever since childhood I have been obsessed with mythology, on occasions art that relates to it is  shown in the gallery, in fact a couple of years ago we had an exhibition 'LEGEND' devoted to it. So it would be easy to understand why I was drawn to the work by Antonio.

What seemed strange was that I was returning one 'Minotaur' by Beth Carter only to discover

another artist working in a very similar style whose work we hope to be showing soon.

Above I have shown a few pieces of their sculpture , the top three are by Beth.

I like both there styles.

What the evening did do was to give me the determination that next year

I would be back, but this time not to look.

Where the last week went to I'm not sure but I do know that it seemed very hectic.

Last Monday the potter Mark Griffiths delivered his work for the exhibition that was to open on the following Sunday. It made a real treat to have exhibits delivered early, and I knew that this was going to give me plenty of time to arrange the gallery, do a price list and generally get done all of the small jobs that seem to mount up before an exhibition.

We usually try to clear the gallery before a show so that there is no distraction from the new work, this is something that is always a nightmare as it involves wrapping, boxing and storing all

of the 'normal' work, something that seems to take longer each time.

Having Mark's work here early meant that as I packed things away I could unwrap and display his pots as I went along, so in theory the gallery would look normal to any person calling in.

Well, that was the way it was meant to work.

In reality it turned into the normal chaos with boxes and wrappings littered everywhere and the place looked anything but normal.

Funnily enough more people tend to come inside when it is like this, much to my embarrassment.

At least when Mark arrived on Saturday afternoon everything was ready and we were able to

go out for a drink and talk "pots". 

At the opening Mark had agreed to demonstrate how he throws his pots, so in centre position within the shop we had a 'potters wheel' and piles of clay and Mark complete in his 'potting' overalls.

It's hard to understand and to explain the fascination of watching a potter 'throw', but fascinate it does and we soon had a small crowd including some well known potters surrounding Mark,

who spent as much time answering questions [from people writing notes] as he did throwing.

With the exhibition and demonstration under way I was able to start relaxing for the first time  and I took my first opportunity to have a good look at his pots and was able to appreciate them without any of the setting up concerns on my mind.

I loved what I looked at.

It was a good day, a good show and with some very good pots.

I mentioned a while ago that we had an exhibition coming up next year of the potter

Jim Malone

so last weekend when he was showing at a gallery in Kensington in the heart of London

I went down to see him and the pots on show.

Although I have spent most of my life working in London it now feels a place very alien to me

and if wasn't for the opportunity of seeing his work I wouldn't have put myself

through the 'ordeal' of a London visit.

But it was worthwhile, and apart from the disappointment of missing Jim who had to catch a train back to Cumbria I was glad that I went.

I had visited his studio about six weeks previously which was a unique experience,

at the time he had no pots to show as they were all waiting to be fired.

This turned out to be a magical experience as it gave me a small insight into his world,

as apart from the orderly racks of decorated but unfired pots

on his desk were lots of sketches of the pots that he was making with his notes of how he

intended to decorate and glaze them alongside.

It was a unique insight into the world of the artist and my only regret was I couldn't see how the drawings interpreted into the finished pots.

However the trip to London enabled me to see what his mind had 'envisaged'.

This was important to me as his exhibition with us next year is the fulfillment of a dream.

I have loved and collected Jim's pots for over a quarter of a century [which sounds a very long time indeed] and it has been a long held belief that one day he would be famous.

Now he is.

I remember at his first exhibition over 25 years ago thanking him for making my dinner plate that I used each day [and every day since] as it gave me such pleasure.

He asked my name and shook my hand.

When we opened the gallery I approached him and asked could we stock some of his pots,

"I remember you, didn't I shake your hand a while ago"?

It had been something that I had long remembered but never expected him to.

I was wrong, Jim is the man and the potter of my dreams,

his success gives me nothing but pleasure and has me often thinking

"I knew he would make it".

So can you imagine the pleasure that it will give me next year to host an exhibition by this man? Not many dreams in life come true but this one has.

To top this I am going to be writing an article about him and his work for the magazine

'Ceramic Review'

to coincide with our exhibition.

It does make me think that at times in our lives, for "better or worse'

some things are meant to be.

Very soon I have to return the paintings of David Shanahan as he will be showing in London at the 'Affordable Art' fair and he will need as much of his work as possible to show there.

In truth we have had them here for much longer than had been originally intended but the response to them has been so good that I asked if we could show them a little longer.

David being the lovely generous man he is agreed to let us keep them until the middle of this month.

His paintings are like nothing you have seen before and are very beautiful and slightly disturbing, and all are very obviously about Ireland, if it were possible to determine a persons Nationality from their face then his paintings more than any artist show the Irish people. The paintings certainly provoke a lot of thought and have generated great interest.

It is easy to see why he is so sought after and why his work is in the collections of many famous people.

It is said that 'every picture tells a story', Davids work tells you a fragment of a story, each picture is like a page torn from a book.

It has you asking "what came before, what will happen next"?

This is one of the great appeals they have and it has been interesting here in the gallery to listen to peoples different interpretations of them.

I really like the paintings and the man that painted them.

So my thoughts have been very much on David and his art, which had been the catalyst for our Ireland exhibition a few months ago, and as it does one thought led to another and it had me thinking about how lucky we had been with different Irish artists/sculptors/potters.

I love to visit Ireland and am very much in love with the landscape so it has become a great pleasure to get to know, and then to show some of its artists.

The three artists whose work we always have on display are Ana Duncan, Fidelma Massey and

Adam Frew.

Adam is a young potter from Northern Ireland and I will write more about him at a later date,

but as far as I am concerned he is the best new potter to emerge for sometime and I am convinced he will be going on to great things.

Both Ana and Fidelma are sculptors, but such different sculptors, their work is as different as it is possible to find, but at the same time both have their roots very much in Ireland and it shows in what they make.

For me the "Boats" by Ana are very much about the Ireland I dream of as they depict scenes that are now rarely seen but which are very much about the heritage of the country.

The sense of motion and action that she manages to capture with her bronze sculptures is incredible, they really are full of life and action. In contrast her figures of women in all their different shapes and guises are very gentle and extremely beautiful.

Fidelma's work by contrast very much shows the Ireland of Myth and Legend, like David's work

they leave the viewer asking many questions. I believe a lot of the Legends involved in her work are from her own imagination and I'm sure if asked she could tell many stories about them.

She is an extremely versatile artist producing work in ceramics, bronze and stone as well as her

unusual drawings, I think the work that we have shown in Imagine just "scratches the surface"

of what she is capable of producing.

'Scratching the Surface'?

Above are a few pictures of there collective work which does just that.

The last few days have been busy, so today it is hard to know what to talk about because as usual it is at the end of the day that my thoughts have turned to the journal and there is not enough time to mention everything that I have seen, or where I have been to and things that I have thought about , so I decided that  I would tell you about the one idea that has occupied most of my thoughts today. The reason for this is because I have been talking to one artist and answering questions about another all day, so here is where my muddled mind is tonight,

I intend to go very soon to visit the amazing illustrator and author Jackie Morris who lives in a remote corner of Pembrokeshire. Jackie is a very successful artist and also an incredibly intelligent and very caring woman, if anyone has followed her journal over the last few years they will understand what a very clever, complex and articulate person she is, her daily writing on her 'blog' I can only compare with Dylan Thomas, and I don't say this lightly.

I am constantly in awe of her and relish the insight that she gives us all into her daily world.

Over the past couple of years Jackie has been very kind to us, as a gallery, she has given us lots of amazing work to display which has been a thrill and pleasure, but on top of that she has never put us under pressure to "sell" or blamed us when we haven't, which believe me is a very rare thing. More than anything we want to sell an artist's work and Jackie understands that and helps us along the way.

I have long wanted to have an exhibition of her work but have never managed to gather the courage to ask her, so to my delight a few weeks ago she asked " how about an exhibition next year"?

What a delight and privilege.

This I am determined to do but only one thing has troubled me, we are very much a 3D gallery

and our main display areas are devoted  to sculpture and ceramics so I know that people who made the effort to come to an exhibition would expect something else as well as paintings.

What to do?

Most of today was spent talking and answering questions about a ceramic sculptor 'Karen Fawcett', who is a very good friend and like Jackie has supported and believed in the gallery for a long while. They are both part of our extended family and their help is appreciated, having artists who take it upon themselves to help you out when they know you most need it, sending us there best work when it could and would be taken by any gallery  is never taken for granted.

So, I'm going to show Jackie and I need someone who makes three dimensional work to show alongside and compliment it.

I must have lost the plot somewhere, I have just compared their different works.

Blimey! It's the same but in different mediums.

I just hope that Karen who is due to have a baby very soon thinks the same and will agree to an

exhibition as I think that they will work well together, they are so very much alike without knowing it or each other, and the combination of their work I'm sure will look

really good.

  

It would be unfair to let our latest exhibition come to a close without talking about the artist Mark Rowney.

Without Mark there would have been no exhibition. It all started from the day I stumbled across his painting 'Aerobombus' on the Internet whilst following a "lead" on another artist.

One look and I was hooked. Like many people I have long been a fan of the artist Kit Williams [famous for the treasure hunt book 'Masquerade' ] but I had never come across work that equalled it until I looked at Mark's work, not only was this as good but he had taken it onto levels that Kit had never dreamt of.

I just had to show this work. From this obsession an exhibition was born.

Mark is a man of many, many talents but is also the most down to earth person that you could ever meet.

Having said that it paints a different picture from the man that I have come to know, let me tell you a little about him.

Mark is the son of a cowboy, and grew up on a 'cowboy' ranch. Hhhhmmmmm! Maybe not that unusual, apart from the fact that this ranch was in rural 'County Durham' not Texas.

Both his parents were committed cowboys and they ran for many years a Cowboy Ranch in England. Mark says that from an early age dressed as a [confederate soldier]he can remember directing cars to their places in the car park, so not the normal childhood but a lot more exciting than most, it seemed that Mark had the 'boyhood' that most of us dreamt of,

but for Mark this was all a part of everyday life.

He eventually went on to study art at St. Martins Collage in London, but it is his story of his homecoming that I will never forget.

Whilst away he had grown his hair long and dyed it yellow [as you do when young] but before returning to the 'Ranch' he at least had the foresight to call his Mother and warn her, she promised to "break the ice" and tell his father.

Returning home Mark says everything was "fine" except for his father who sat "drumming" his fingers on the arm of the sofa saying nothing, and who eventually got up and walked out of the room,

to return Minutes later and proclaim " just look at yer, what are you turning into"?

These comments coming from a man dressed in a 'Stetson hat', wearing leather 'chaps' and with

two 'six guns' in holsters.

"I realised then", Mark said "that my life just wasn't going to be normal".

It hasn't been, but it would take many more hours than I have to even give you a glimpse of it.

Mark has had many "artistic" adventures around the world, I would suggest the best way to learn of them would be to give me a call then we could all arrange a [very long] evening in a pub to hear them.

Mark is one of the most interesting, exciting yet humble artist's that we have had the pleasure to show and I "really" hope that our association continues for many years.

Here is just a tiny taste of his work. 

I have spent the last couple of days trying to design an invitation for our next exhibition.

We have never run two exhibitions so closely together, but in this case I had to make an exception.

This last year has been a strange and very hard one for the majority of  people and none more so than artist's.

I have been told many times this year "art is something that we don't need", as people try to justify why they aren't spending. This is strange as art is something that we can't live without, it enriches our lives and often "fills a void" which we had been unaware of until we see a particular piece of work which will then eat away at our desires until we possess it.

Well that's how it works for me anyway.

But it has been a strange year and one that has fed the seeds of self doubt to many artists, so it has been a delight and pleasure each time that we have encountered one who has carried on producing strong work with no thought of "market forces" but with a love and strong belief in their own art. 

None more so than Mark Griffiths, the potter.

Throughout the year he has been producing work that just gets stronger and more beautiful, and in spite of the times has gone from strength to strength creating for himself a large following and a market eager for his work.

I had longed wanted to show his work but our schedule didn't allow us to run any more exhibitions until the middle of next year, and I knew that by then Mark would be too committed elsewhere and would be unable to show with us.

So taking the "bull by the horns" I asked was he able to fit us in at all this year.

The result, we are running two exhibitions much closer than we have ever done, but it was that or lose the opportunity of showing Mark for some time.

This has meant that for me the last two days have been spent putting a new invitation together.

Something that I enjoy yet hate as I am never happy with the result.

This evening I completed it, so here it is ready to go to the printer on Monday.

I hope you like it Mark