| Our August exhibition is by JAMES MERRIOTT and it's a really good and representative show of his work. Visitors to Lindsell and readers of Essex Life and Hertfordshire Life magazines will already be familiar with Jim's well observed and freely painted landscapes and some of the paintings are also on the website. We had an interesting coincidence last week. A visitor had just bought 'Thaxted Guildhall' from Jim Merriott's show, when she spotted her horse, with her son and herself in a painting by Katy Sodeau, a member of the Society of Equestrian Artists, so she bought that as well! The rest of this year's EXHIBITION PROGRAMME is listed on the Gallery Events page. PICTURE FRAMING is keeping busy. Hayley, our framer, does a very good and very reliable job (if she says it will be ready, it will be ready!) and she has built up her own clientele of people who deal directly with her on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when she is here in the workshop. Thank you, Hayley, for helping to keep us afloat in these troubled times. And, to keep the work coming in, we have extended our popular '10% off framing' offer for the forseeable future. We ran our new Thursday afternoon LIFE DRAWING at a loss for six months, people said they wanted it but just didn't keep coming, so it has now stopped. And although numbers are down, the evening sessions are covering their costs so I don't think they won't go the same way. Drop-in life drawing such as this is a rare and valuable resource and it would be a pity if it were to cease for lack of interest. And, talking about lack of interest, Chappel Galleries, a well established art gallery between Colchester and Halstead, closed down in March because of lack of visitors and sales. Which leads neatly to . . . GALLERY ECONOMICS Unfortunately some people seem to think an art gallery runs itself. They will spend ages looking round and chatting and then leave without so much as buying a greetings card. While they are perfectly entitled to do this, they they don't seem to realise that without sales we can't pay the overheads and if we can't pay the overheads we won't be here the next time they come. Sorry for the lecture but that's basic gallery economics! An interesting update. A couple came on a recent Monday, when we were closed but as I was around I let them in to save them a wasted journey. I put on the gallery lighting, let them look round and we chatted a bit – then they left without even buying a greetings card. They did say they might come to the first day of the new one-man show on the following Saturday. But they didn't. This prompts me to ask, has the 'one-man show' had its day? Like many art galleries we stage shows where we give an artist, maybe two, our 'exhibition wall' to show their work for a month. We invite previous buyers, and many others, to meet them and have the pick of the work on the first day, and hope to sell up to twenty paintings on that day and maybe fifty in the month of the show. That's how it used to be. Now few people come. Is it the recession, too much competition for other events, changes in taste? Whatever the reason it is a real shame, for both the artists and the gallery, who all put time, effort and money into staging such exhibitions. Would it be better simply to concentrate on keeping the general display of paintings and other work fresh and up-to-date and forget the specific one-man shows? Having said all that the Jim Merriott show is doing rather well, so where does that leave us? Apart from all that . . . We are still selling paintings – and jewellery, craftwork, picture framing and life drawing – and have just had a reasonable July which more than covered the overheads. But in general, too few people are visiting and we are especially missing a lot of our 'regulars', although new people are finding us on the internet. Most visitors buy something, even if only a couple of greetings cards, or they bring in some framing – and it is interesting to note how many new visitors say 'we didn't think it would be as good as this' or words to that effect. (Well, we have always said if you don't come you'll never know!) However, without the grant from Essex County Council's Life Raft Trust, which allowed to us update our website into this secure selling site , we would be in serious financial trouble. And we are getting some nice comments about the website and video: "very impressive", "excellent show", "brilliant", "really does capture the friendly gallery atmosphere". Ex-BBC cameraman Martin Bisiker did a super job, we all enjoyed the day spent filming and views like that make it all doubly worthwhile. We think it shows that we are real people with a sense of purpose, but a sense of humour too. Let's hope it takes away a bit of the diffidence some people still feel about visiting an art gallery. John Garrett 17th August 2010 |
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GALLERY BLOG
