Newsletter 15th March ’07

This Newsletter covers both my painting and photographic work - if you've only seen one of my websites, here they both are:
Visit my gallery of Paintings at www.nancyfarmer.net Visit the Dolls’ website (photographs) at www.fetishdollies.co.uk

I thought it was about time I emailed everyone again as I have a couple of exhibitions fast approaching, but first, a couple of new paintings...

New paintings - a shoal of Mermaids...

Postscript, added March 2008: as I now have several Mermaid paintings I've brought back the Mermaid Gallery so you can see all the paintings together...

I seem to have had a bit of a run on Mermaids lately - before last month I'd managed 4 paintings of mermaids - ever, and now suddenly I have 7 of them. Actually the whole thing started with the 'Blood Relative' exhibition (above) - where everyone was asked to come up with an A5 piece of work specially for the exhibition, somewhere vaguely along the lines of the 'Blood Relative' title... so I started thinking about the kind of relatives one might end up with, and at some point I started thinking about mermaids... So that's where the Maidmers came in - half fish, half women, just like the Mermaids. The Surrealist Magritte painted one, I know, but I don't believe he ever considered the reaction of the Mermaids to their disreputable cousins...

'Maidmers on the Beach'

And then I thought a few more of the rarer sorts of mermaids could make an interesting subject, so here are the 'Arctic Mermaids'. Of course these are specially adapted to the freezing seas of the arctic - huge and ungainly out of the water, compared to their skinny cousins from temperate regions, but graceful in the water, and of course they need the thick skin and layers of blubber to be well protected against the inhospitable temperatures, and probably against the Polar Bears, too. I'm not sure if polar bears eat mermaid mind you, or mermaids eat polar bear. Actually I wonder what mermaids eat at all - now there's an interesting idea, though I have no picture for it at present...

'Arctic Mermaids'

'Ooh La La' - an exhibition of Burlesque Inspired Art

At: 'View From The Top' gallery, Bridlesmith Gate, Nottingham NG1 2GR

March 20th - 26th 2007

I'm off up to Nottingham on Tuesday, with some of the 'Fetishdollies' photographs for this exhibition. If you haven't seen these, they have their own website at www.fetishdollies.co.uk. Sorry, I'm not taking any paintings - the ones that could fit in nicely are going to the 'Portraits of the Bizarre' exhibition (see below) but this is probably a good thing as Dollies make more of an impact on their own, and do not like to share the limelight, though they are of course sharing the exhibition with many other things already - it sounds like it's going to be a brilliant and interesting mix. The exhibition promises "fine art, photography, illustration, fashion design, corsetry, millinery, lingerie, costumes, nipple tassels, jewellery, glassware, gifts and much much more". You can visit the gallery website at www.viewfromthetop.co.uk, and the exhibition even has its own site at: www.oohlala-art.co.uk.

'Portraits of the Bizarre' - joint exhibition, and a talk

At: Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury, Somerset, BA6 8DB , UK

28th April - 3rd June 2007

Another Joint exhibition of my paintings and Lucy Hinds' wall haningings. We have the gallery between the two of us so there'll be a lot of my paintings and drawings to be seen, including work new this year. Some of Lucy's rag-rug wall hangings can be seen on the Somerset Art Week website. Despite the name of this venue the exhibition will have nothing to do with rural life... unless I find a few demons working out on the Somerset Levels, which they probably do, of course...

One thing new about this exhibition is that I'll be giving a sort of 'presentation' on the afternoon of Sunday May 13th (for exact time please email me nearer the time or check the Rural Life Museum website). This all came about because I was asked to give a talk by Glastonbury Symposium in July (an unlikely event for me, being, as it apparently is, 'the longest running symposium on Crop Circles and associated subjects'), but the organizers seem to feel that a little excursion into the habits of fairies and demons and other such creatures as inhabit my paintings would make a nice refreshing interlude in the day's lectures. So I'll be giving a slide show of a selection of my paintings, and explaining a few of the stories behind them. I hope to entertain rather than inform and will attempt to keep the lecture decently fact-free. So, as something of a warm-up, and because I have to do the preparation anyway, I've offered to give a (possibly shorter) presentation at the Rural Life Museum, and Lucy has been persuaded to give a demonstration of rag-rugging as well. Please do come along for it if you're interested - it's open to all, but a quick email to let me know you're coming would be appreciated just so I have an idea of how many people to expect.

Somerset Rural Life Museum website

'BloodRelative' exhibition, Paintworks, Bristol, UK

5th - 14th April 2007

This is an exhibition to be held at 'Paintworks' in Bristol "primarily to raise money for the Diabetes UK Charity, while giving a voice to a wide variety of artists from the UK to exhibit their work in a positive and exciting way". Everyone taking part in the exhibition has been asked to donate an A5 piece of art done especially for the exhibition - with some kind of connection to the exhibition title to unite everything. I believe the A5 pieces will probably be auctioned - though I'm not sure this has been finalized. My piece is now up on my site - you can see it by clicking on the thumbnail below. In addition I'll be exhibiting two or three large paintings or drawings.
For more information visit the BloodRelative site at www.bloodrelative.org
For a map of how to get there see the paintworks website: www.paintworksbristol.co.uk

'Blood Relative' drawing - especially for this exhibition.

See my Exhibitions Page for more about exhibitions.

'Permanent Sketches'

The little drawings that I put up on ebay were rather successful for a while, but I apologise that I ran out of steam around Christmas and stopped doing them. I've been busily scribbling since then, but the first of these 'Permanent Sketches' are reserved for the Glastonbury exhibition. After that I'm hoping to start listing a few of this sort of thing, maybe on Ebay again. I'll let you know. And on the subject of originals I'm in the middle of totally re-writing my website, and the new version will come complete with a list of available originals and prices (when available and not stuck in exhibitions) so you won't need to email me for a list, and better still, the new list comes with pictures and links. I'll no doubt be emailing everyone again when or before the new site is ready, as there's a lot of work still to be done on it - the layout is changing a lot, and it's currently a subtle shade of sludge-colour, but I think it looks quite pretty.

So, to return to the 'Permanent Sketches'. I called them this because they're all done in indelible pen - mostly a black marker and a white paint-pen kind of thing, and I had a rule with them that once I started on a piece of paper I didn't chuck it away or start again until the picture - whatever it turned out to be - was finished. This is actually great fun, and good practice, and I'm never really sure what I will come up with each time... and naturally some of them came out better than others, but opinions differ on which is which...

Here are just a few:

'Permanent Sketch No. 15'

'Permanent Sketch No. 11'

'Permanent Sketch No. 27'

T-shirts, mugs, mousemats...

I've found a company called 'Spreadshirt' which will print images on things to order - and this time they're in Europe, unlike the other site I tried, so there is no problem with import duty and the like if you're ordering from the UK. I'm still in the middle of checking some samples out, but with a bit of luck I'll be able to offer a few bits and pieces with some of my pictures on. If you want to know more check the site in a couple of weeks or so, or email me.

For anyone in the USA, I still have items on the American-based CafePress site at www.cafepress.com/nancyfarmer/

Fetishdollies

The dolls continue to feature in Scarlet Magazine in their guise of horoscope characters, and what with that, an appearance on MTV Italy, and their immanent outing to Nottingham they are still putting in the occasional appearance here and there... Here - below - are Sagittarius and Aquarius. I'm also just about to add the past horoscope pictures to their website.

'Sagittarius' and 'Aquarius'

Past events - The Pantomime and the Sudbury Exhibition

The pantomime now seems like a long time ago, but I haven't done a newsletter since it ended, so I thought a couple of words and a picture would be in order... If you want to see more have a look on my site under 'past exhibitions' at this page: www.nancyfarmer.net/exhibitions_07_01_14_panto.html, where I've put a whole load of photos up.

I was asked by Bridgwater Arts Centre to do the costumes, and design and paint the scenery for their community pantomime 'Hamish the Hedgehurst' - the whole thing put together by Clive Pig and the cast. The house has recovered now, but for about three months you could hardly move for sequins, glitter, chicken costumes and rubber hedgehog spikes, to name but a few items. Fortunately I have been hoarding glittery things since I was 5, so no problem there, and the sewing machine has never been so well used in its entire life. Amongst my favourite costumes was the princess's wedding dress, out of bubblewrap... and yes, you can sew bubblewrap, kind of, but you have to pop the bubbles along the seam first or it won't go under the machine... Anyway it was all great fun and there were too many people involved to list them here, but to everyone who was involved - thanks for being brilliant to work with.

The Exhibition at the Quay Theatre in Sudbury was also superb - thank you Ulla, Neil, Marion, the Friends of the Quay, and the Quay Theatre - and of course to everyone who came along, it was a really successful exhibition - and so nice to be asked back to where I had my first exhibition ever! The pictures, when I brought them back, went straight out again to an exhibition just down the road, in Street - Thank you Simon, and again, thanks to those who visited there, too.

All of this activity rather meant that I got not a single painting done towards the end of last year - apart from a few sketches and the Christmas card, of course... but work is well under way again, ass you'll have seen if you've been keeping an eye on the website, with a few new things for the next exhibition...

Ebay

...still auctioning a few prints each week on ebay:
Click here for prints of my painted work or search for seller id nancy_farmer

That's all the news for now, but I'll be emailing invites to the Glastonbury exhibition quite soon, just to remind anyone who happens to be nearby (sorry, I know some people who get this are half way round the world, but as I don't know half of who lives where I simply have to invite everyone in the hope that some can make it. Anything else you'd like to know, do email me...
take care
Nancy
x

Nancy Farmer
Visit the Dolls website at www.fetishdollies.co.uk
Visit my Gallery of Paintings at www.nancyfarmer.net