SF 2010 Photo Shoot

On a sunny afternoon this week you may, if you were lucky have caught sight of this gathering in Kirkpatrick Durham village. This year Juliet and Alan who live in the village have organised Spring Fling tours with a difference, they are offering tours over the weekend from the comfort of a motorcycle side car. To help promote this with the help of Dumfries and Galloway Life Phil McMenemy, Hazel Campbell and Spring Fling's own Rhiannon Batten got into the 1950's swing for a photo shoot with DG Life photographer Phil Rigby, pictured below.

The sidecars will each take one passenger and the tours have no set charge but donations are being given to the National Autistic Society and the Greek Cat Welfare Society. For more information contact Alan on 07887 821613.

Look out for the results of the afternoon photo session in the June issue of Dumfries and Galloway Life out in early May. Thanks to all involved, including Lochside Theatre for helping with the props.

Success for Spring Flingers

These happy Spring Fling artists were photographed outside the Royal Scottish Academy building on the Mound in Edinburgh, last Thursday night, 18th March. They were attending a Salon Evening organised by the Friends of the RSA to publicise the work of exhibitors.

From left to right, they are- Jennifer Watt, Silvana MacLean, Patti Lean, Denise Zygadlo, Gill Shreeve, Bella Green and Dougie Muego. Not present, but also exhibiting, were-Hazel Campbell, and Sam, Nancy and John Chinnery.

All these artists were successful in having their work selected for the recent annual exhibitions of premier Scottish Arts Societies held at the RSA. Their work was shown at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours, the Scottish Society of Artists or Visual Arts Scotland exhibitions.

Fierce competition comes from artists from all over Scotland for places at these prestige
shows. It is a mark of the quality of the work produced in Dumfries and Galloway and by Spring Fling artists that so many successful artists were selected from within this region.

Well done to all!

Spring Fling Christmas Party 2009

Huge thanks to the main schemers and organisers of the Spring Fling Christmas party who were Hazel Campbell and Lizzie Farey pictured here during the preparation last friday afternoon. Held in Rhonehouse village hall all members of SFOS were invited to bring a pot luck Indian meal and meet other members and Gracefield Arts Team staff.

Good food, a good quiz - all SF questions of course, and a great guess the crafts person that was the baby in the picture competition, an A5 piece of art work swap and great company. How much better can it be? Lizzie Farey, on behalf of the village hall committee offers "especial thanks for the very generous donation towards our Village Hall roof repairs and new lighting. A brilliant example of Spring Fling's impact on local communities!"

To Rhonehouse Village Hall we say thank you for having us.

SFOS Committee Members Updates.

Here are a few updates from some of your Spring Fling Open Studios Committee members just to get a feel for some of the things they are up to at the moment. More to follow soon so watch this space.

Having come back from Glasgow Art Fair slightly disappointed, then back from London rather confused after talking to some of the gallery owners there, I was really delighted to hear that I had won the Plein Air prize at Paisley Art Institute which is a week in a studio in BURGUNDY !! Brilliant!! We are going in the middle of September. Definitely feel much more enthusiastic!

Best wishes Hazel Campbell - Studio 49 on the Red Route.

Having participated in every Spring Fling to date I am now having a year off. One of the downsides of the event for me has always been the envy invoked by Spring-Flinging visitors' accounts of their visits to other studios. So this year, though I will have my own studio open as usual on the Saturday and Monday, I am very excited at the prospect of spending the Sunday seeing Spring Fling from the other side.
Jo Gallant

Lizzie Farey - Studio 50 on the Red Route - has been recently appointed as a Specialist Advisor for Crafts to the Scottish Arts Council. Definitly good to have someone from the region there.

Spring Fling Open Studios Committee members at their post Christmas meal.

Don't forget if you are a Spring Fling Participant and have a story to tell about your Spring Fling 2009 preparation do let us know. Or have you visited Spring Fling in previous years? Tell us about it.

Mosses, Waters, Slaps and Style

From March 7th to 29th this year Hazel Campbell will be having a solo exhibition at the High Street Gallery in Kirckudbright entitled "Mosses, Waters, Slaps and Style". Her forth exhibition with the gallery this show will feature mostly landscapes with a few inclusions of brightly coloured flower studies amongst them.

Hazel Campbell has developed her own vigorous style of painting which exudes life and vitality and she draws endless inspiration from the Galloway countryside in which she lives. Increasingly Hazel's work is developing in a less representational direction which she will be keen to discuss with visitors at Spring Fling.

Studio 49 on the Red Route of the Spring Fling Hazel's studio is set in the converted stable beside a typical Scottish back garden and is a welcoming and vibrant place to visit. During the summer Hazel runs popular painting schools which are tailored to meet individual needs. If you would like to know more visit her website.

If you can't make it to the gallery a full catalogue is available from the High Street Gallery.

Visual Arts Scotland Exhibition in Edinburgh

We are pleased to announce that 9 of our Spring Fling Open Studio '09 artists were accepted for the Visual Arts Scotland Open Exhibition, held this year at the City Arts Centre in Edinburgh.

Hazel Campbell
John Chinnery
Nancy Chinnery
Bella Green
Lucianne Lassalle
Hannah McAndrew
Christine Milne
Jennifer Watt
Elizabeth Waugh

2009 Annual Visual Arts Scotland Open Exhibition of Visual and Applied Arts
City Arts Centre, 2 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DE
open 31st Jan to 19th March. Monday to Saturday 10-5 Sunday 12-5

http://www.visualartsscotland.org/

Hazel Campbell

Hazel has lived and worked in Galloway for most of her adult life, and through attendance at painting classes over a number of years she has developed her own vigorous style of painting. She has a loose, bold approach, working mainly in oil and gouache, using local Galloway countryside as a stimulus for landscape painting. Still life and flowers are also subjects, and like the landscapes, are being treated in an increasingly broad manner.

John and Nancy Chinnery

John and Nancy run Lynwood Carvers and Gilders, a traditional workshop based in Southern Scotland. Lynwood keep alive the traditional crafts of carving and gilding, producing beautiful pieces in much the same way they would have been made two centuries ago. They employ all the classical techniques to create fresh designs as well as more traditional pieces. Over the years they have worked on jobs for the House of Lords, Stirling Castle, Glamis Castle and other historic buildings, private commissions and the antique trade.

Bella Green

Bella’s main expressive element in painting is colour, it is her passion. She loves its emotive power to communicate all shades of feeling. She enjoys decoratively reorganising the facts of things seen through both still life subjects and landscape to make compositions freed from direct observation. She aims for balance and simplification of forms, unexpected juxtapositions of imagery and playful placement of shapes which may evoke visual narratives.

Recurrent themes are inside/outside; views through windows and doorways and tabletops with objects. such as vessels, flowers and articles with personal associations such as her tango dancing shoes. She likes to use different degrees of representation such as graphic elements contrasted with modeled forms, as well as multiple viewpoints to create visual tension. She works mainly in oils because of its richness and versatility but will use any medium which will suit her purpose.

Lucianne Lassalle

Lucianne will be showing at Spring Fling for the first time this year. She works directly from the figure with a variety of clays but mostly stoneware. "I build up the sculpture using clay slabs and modeling the clay as I go, sometimes I also use a mould of a previous piece to get the basic form. None of my work is from life casts it is all hand modeled I am interested in the craft of interpreting the figure in my own way not in copying it".
Lucianne is currently in the process of exploring new materials and making methods. The content of her work is changing too looking more deeply into human relationships, what does it mean to be human, responding to what’s going on at the moment in the socio/political/world arena.

Hannah McAndrew

"I love clay. I love the feel of it in my hands, wedging it into the correct consistency for the job I am about to do, the smooth fluidity of it on the wheel, the ease and satisfaction of turning a foot ring into a pot that is at just the right stage of leather hardness. I love the way my pouring slips stick to a leather hard pot and the way the excess runs off like cream while the trailing slips sink gently into the freshly applied base layer. I love the way my sgraffito tool runs cleanly through a layer of semi-dry white slip to reveal the deep red of the clay body underneath. I love the potential for creativity and the fact that the pots that I make can in turn be used to make and serve food and drink."


Christine Milne

Christine's landscapes shift evocatively between abstraction and observation, small jewels of half remembered light and form. Her work is represented in several collections, including the Scottish Academy, and the Italian Institute in Edinburgh.
The ferocity with which a storm wave explodes against an ancient but ever receding sea cliff. Myriad sparkling streams slowly exposing the skeletons of the mountains and joining to carve the valleys to the sea. Christine's paintings are created in much the same way as water creates our landscape,with its intricate patterns and textures, shared at every level, from mountain ranges to a pebble on a beach.

Jennifer Watt

Jennifers' work is mostly inspired by nature and is executed mainly in British hardwoods. Recently she has been working on a series called New Beginnings. They are all inspired by birth in its many forms, whether it is a chestnut opening to reveal its glossy inner shell, a seedling pushing through the ground or the birth of a baby child.
At the same time she continues to work on figurative pieces. "The interactive movement of the human form holds endless fascination for me as does the bond between mother and child and the tenderness that exists between them. These are my inspirations and aspirations."

Elizabeth Waugh

At 79, Elizabeth works with as much enthusiasm and energy as she ever has and still follows her great love and fascination of human and animal forms in her creative endeavours. She finds that her desires to experiment and further her creativity or to exhibit widely are not in any way marred by her age.
Elizabeth’s work, usually built in plaster and then cast in bronze or bronze resin in small scale strictly limited editions, is mainly figurative and includes both human nude and animal forms. Elizabeth was brought up and still lives in close contact with animals and aims to incorporate the diverse character; movement and general ‘feel’ of the different species from which she works.
She aims to produce sculpture, which is tactile in nature and is always pleased when she sees people touching her work.