A Portrait of an Artist as a Very Late Starter

So, sketchbooks still not completed. Horrendous filth at home, which I am valiantly trying to clean up in time for Christmas. The team are still on site, installing the wood pellet boiler, the company involved do not seem to know the meaning of the words project management. Today was one of the worst days of the ongoing refurbishment of our house ever.

BUT: after feeling so low, at the end of the day I opened my emails to find that my first ever application to participate in North Yorkshire Open Studios has been successful. So at least I have had a more positive end to the day.

I am quite excited at the prospect; it gives me the incentive to get back into the studio in the new year and get my new projects going as well as painting two large canvases to complete the quartet I started this year.

With the sketch book touring in the new year as part of Sketch 2013, the painting I am showing as part of W0budong in Manchester and now NYOS, it feels good to know I have good opportunities in the diary already.

You never know, I might get the decorations up before Christmas eve this year! It is 11.37pm so I am going to have an early night . . .

http://www.nyos.org.uk/

A series of exhibitions has been set up for Ryedale ArtWorks members over the next twelve months at The White Room Gallery @ Priestleys No. 36, Bootham, York. https://www.facebook.com/thewhiteroom36 This is part of our funded work; to raise RAW’s profile beyond the boundaries of Ryedale itself. We are very excited about it, though it remains to be seen if I get selected to show! Our first opening is tomorrow night, so if the lurgy I’m suffering from eases off, I shall be there.

I am immensely proud of how far we have come as a group in the last eighteen months or so. There are lots of possibilities in the pipeline in terms of exhibition spaces and collaborations. However, I need to prioritise time for making my own work in the new year. I haven’t even touched my sketch book during the last two weeks. Shock horror.

Today, I learned how to register my blog with Networked Blogs and get a tab to it on my facebook page, so I have not been wasting my time. All this social networking stuff is great but I am not all that confident with it. A colleague, who had just been on a Chrysalis Arts course about such things, told a couple of us how to do it and posted a useful link to a blog about such stuff. I am learning fast though: I did my first Mail Chimp newsletter last week without help from anyone, AND no swearing. Amazing; the tinterweb has an online lesson on just about everything. Now, I wonder if I can find out how to mend my wonky chair . . .

To do list:

Finish writing training outlines for RAW members.

Finish filling my sketchbook -only a few pages left.

Start new sketchbook to try out colour studies using my watercolours and anything I can find that is not buried under builder’s dust.

Clean dust? Nah, not yet, still some work to be completed.

Finish sketchbook in readiness for work in studio in the new year.

Mend wonky chair.

Find another empty sketch book; I seem to have quite a goodly collection of those!

Oh, and can I just say a big thank you to all the readers who put my blog in the top ten during August and September. (Places 7th and 6th respectively). To my shame, I only just realised I had been so elevated last week because I hadn’t realised there was such a thing as a top ten. Now I must resist the temptation of checking to see if I get there again!