"She sells seashells on the seashore" goes the old song.
And being a shell collector of many years, it's only natural that I want to capture their wonderful shapes and colours in paintings.
My favourites to paint are the cowries and the other kinds which have a natural high sheen, almost as if they've been varnished.
I made a collection of 8 double studies giving their latin names - but stupidly forgot to photograph them before they were framed. Duh!
These went into my first exhibition and - boy oh boy! - was I nervous!
At the preview the night before, the husband of a friend remarked that they were an odd subject to choose for a painting, as in his opinion only a marine biologist would be interested in having something like that hanging on their wall. Oh dear.
As you can imagine, my confidence - already shaky - plummeted at hearing this and I almost pulled them from the show.
Much to my delighted surprise, when the exhibition opened they were the amongst the first to get red stickers, which taught me the valuable lesson of how subjective art can be and how not to listen to any single opinion.
So, fellow art creators - don't be disheartened by the odd stray comment. You thought it was a good idea to paint that subject in the first place so stick to your convictions and hang it with pride!
No comments:
Post a Comment