Newsletter 27th October ’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

Hi again!
I make it a shade under 7 weeks since I last did a newsletter - which is probably a record of efficiency for me - but as there seem to be a few exhibitions and things coming up I thought I'd send out a little list. As to, well, actual work - there's been a lot of activity going on here, but the effect will have gone largely unseen since I've spent a lot of effort getting all technical and nerdy. One day this may result in an extra-efficient website with shopping carts and everything - but don't expect changes overnight... Suffice it to say that I don't have much in the way of actual new pictures to show you this time, apart from one large new piece which you'll see below... oh, and the Gold fairies just keep popping up as well.

The 303 Gallery's Christmas Exhibition, Martock, Somerset

The 303 Gallery in Martock, Somerset (address below), is busily being re-hung and rearranged for their Christmas Exhibition. The gallery will be showing arts and crafts from lots of local artists and it's always worth a look. I have taken a small flock, or maybe a swarm, of Gold Fairies down there, some of them so new they hadn't even made it to my website at the time, and all at a special exhibition price of £95 each. If you want to see exactly which fairies will be making an appearance you can see them all on my site now - they're the second group down on the gold fairies page. In the meantime, here are the latest two.

I apologize if you've seen enough Gold Fairies already - in fact I do have one other new picture that I have left out of this newsletter, but it's this year's Christmas image, which traditionally no-one gets to see till a few days before December, so I'm sorry you'll have to put up with gold fairies for now...

Gold Fairies number 35 and 34

Wearable Art:

I've also taken all the button badges down to the 303 Gallery. I mentioned these a few newsletters back, but if you didn't see it, these are all hand-drawn images in little inch and a quarter button badges - a tiny piece of wearable art. All signed on the back of the badge, too. Here are a few, and they'll all be for sale at the 303 Gallery:

Opening Party: Thursday 1st November, 6pm - 9pm

To start off the Christmas exhibition, there's an opening party at the 303 Gallery this coming Thursday, 6 - 9pm, where drinks and nibbles will be provided and the gallery will no-doubt be as full as usually of pretty things and shiny baubles, so come and have a drink and get some Christmas shopping done early... I know for a fact that there will be things for sale for as low as £5.50 - because there's all my buttons for a start - but there's plenty of other interesting things to see, too...

The 303 Gallery:
Just off the A303, at Yandles Wood Centre on the B3165,
Martock, Somerset, TA12 6JU.
tel: 01935 825891 email: 303gallery@yandleandsons.co.uk

Royal West of England Academy - Open Exhibition

21st October - 12th December

Yay! I submitted pictures to the RWA (Royal West of England Academy) open exhibition, and I've had two accepted - the ones shown below - 'Predatory Birds' and 'Seven Sins at the Seaside'. The RWA is in Bristol, and you can see the exhibition from 21st October to 12th December. There's a map on the RWA's website.

To see the pictures on my website follow these links:
Pretatory Birds
Seven Sins at the Seaside

William Blake-inspired Exhibition - 22nd November - 2nd December

Gallery Eight in Glastonbury, Somerset, is holding a themed exhibition to celebrate the 250th year of the birth of artist, poet and visionary William Blake. As I already mentioned in the last newsletter thingy, I'll be taking part in this exhibition - but I didn't show you the picture before. Now it seems about time to do so:

'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'

Unfortunately - for the purposes of displaying the picture here - it's about 30 inches by 23, so a bit big to fit into a small screen. I have put a close-up image in the gallery which you can see here, and if you scroll from side to side you can see all the detail, but if you're passing through Glastonbury between 22nd November - 2nd December you can see it in the flesh, so to speak. I also have full-sized prints of this one.

The initial starting point was the title of William Blake's 'prophetic' book "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". Blake rejected the established church, though not religion per se, seeing rather the church's views of 'evil' and the Devil as the imaginative, creative drive which the church would control and suppress. As Blake's 'voice of the Devil' declares: "those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained".

So this drawing started as a kind of 'reconciliation' between Heaven and Hell, but its main subject is the anger, horror, alarm and confusion of the 'good' church-goers whose world is undermined because they no-longer have an enemy they can blame and rant against. There are outbreaks of violence, religious fervour, occasional nudity and general chaos...

The three-part design and the use of precious metals was inspired by an idea that it should be reminiscent of something like an altarpiece. Foolishly and at a not inconsiderable cost (almost 4 times the price of gold leaf in fact) I bought a book of platinum leaf, largely on a whim because I had wanted to try platinum leaf on something, and it seemed a picture worthy of the extra expense.... Never again!!!.... I trained and worked for several years as a jeweller, before taking to painting, and I should have known better (having spent more than 4 years making jewellery in this unforgiving metal). The final result was rather fine, but there will be no series of 'platinum fairies', sorry! (except maybe a few to use the remaining sheets of the stuff...).

Anyway - here's the gallery details:
Galleryeight, 8 Market Place, Glastonbury, Somerset, UK, BA6 9HW,
tel: +44 (0) 1458 833574 email: mail@galleryeight.com www.galleryeight.com
(closed Monday and Tuesday - for full opening hours see the gallery's website)

Christmas Open Exhibition - Bridgwater Arts Centre

Tuesday 27th November - Friday 21st December
Bridgwater Arts Centre's Christmas exhibition is also running again as usual, with a theme of 'Razzle Dazzle'. I hope to manage to get some small and affordable pieces done especially for this exhibition again like last year, though as I haven't done them yet I can't say anything else about them!

Bridgwater Arts Centre:
11/13 Castle Street Bridgwater Somerset TA6 3DD
www.bridgwaterartscentre.co.uk

The 'Almost' Solo Exhibition in Nottingham, Nov 20th - 26th

I've left this one last on the list, though for me it's the biggest event, as I'll send round a specific invite a little nearer the time. The exhibition will go up on Tuesday 20th, so I hope it will be viewable from about mid-afternoon (depending on how long it takes me to put it all up) - Likewise the exhibition ends and comes down on Monday 26th, so it will be viewable until I start to take everything down again, probably early / mid-afternoon on that day. I'll be around all week - but not necessarily in the gallery the whole time - so if anyone wants to know when I'll be around, email me before the start and I'll let you know nearer the time.

There'll be an exhibition Private View probably on the Saturday afternoon - I will certainly be there on that day so do come along if you would like to - I know almost no-one at all in Nottingham so the more visitors the better!

The gallery is 'View from the Top' gallery, top floor of Waterstones, right in the middle of Nottingham town centre. I have the whole of the main gallery for this one - though not completely a 'solo' exhibition as Charlotte Thompson will be exhibiting in the smaller gallery, too. If you follow the link to Charlotte's site you'll see our pictures will have no problem sharing the same gallery.

View From the Top gallery:
4th Floor, above Waterstone’s, 1-5 Bridlesmith Gate, Nottingham, NG1 2GR
www.viewfromthetop.co.uk

Calendars and Cards

Well, that's all the exhibitions and things out the way, and I have only one other thing to mention and that's that I have now got Christmas cards and Calendars up for sale. Yes, I know it's only October - but I've already been asked a few times about the cards so I thought it was about time I did something about it... So I have a shiny new page for Christmas Cardsin the shop section of my website, where I'm offering cards of almost all the previous years Christmas pictures - but please note that I have very small numbers of the years before 2002 so if you want any it's best to ask about those early on. 2002 to 2006 I have in larger numbers. Incidentally I've also added a few cards to the usual range in the general greetings cards page.

And I've also set up a couple of calendars in my cafe-press shop. You have a choice of fairies or demons to see you right through the next year - if you visit the shop you can see all the images for each month. These don't come from me - you have to go the the site to order them, but I ordered one of each myself to see what they came out like - they just turned up today and I have to say they are rather nice things!

And on the subject of cards I've also made up some cards from the 'Fetishdollies' postcards I have. They're all in my ebay shop: Art by Nancy Farmer - look down the menu on the left-hand side to find them. Here are just three - there are 14 in all, though some are ruder than others...

That's all the news I can think of for now, anything else you'd like to know, do email me...
take care
Nancy
x

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