Gilly Huber | Artist

I’m now a year older than when I last wrote the ‘blog’, and life hasn’t slowed down one little bit! I’m not grumbling, it’s great to keep busy, it’s just trying to find the time to PAINT that becomes a problem!

I mentioned the Pastel Workshop that I was running - it went really well. Eleven participants and we had pastel paintings ranging from kookaburras to pelicans, cats to giraffes, woylies to horses. My own demonstration pieces were a head portrait of a sulphur-crested cockatoo and a young Clydesdale mare with flowing mane and tail. I’ve fully completed the cockatoo and will have him framed soon. There are a few general exhibitions coming up that I want to enter so I need a few good pieces for those, and Celtic Swan Gallery have asked me to be their Feature Artist during the Spring in the Valley month of October, so I’ll need a full complement of paintings for that. It will more-or-less be another solo exhibition but I know they’ll do a lot of promotion for me which will be a great help.

The Gallery in Whiteman Park told me they could no longer hang my paintings - which was annoying at the time - but if she’d said that it was because she wanted to concentrate on more abstract/surrealist type work then I wouldn’t have been so peeved. It was the bald, “I don’t have room for your paintings, anymore” that took me aback, particularly as I’ve held my solo exhibition there, done the Pastel Workshop, and sold seven paintings through the gallery. Oh well, we live and learn, don’t we? Like I have finally collected paintings that have been hanging in a local restaurant for over two years (partly my fault, should have taken them before now). They were absolutely filthy and one of the frames is damaged. Also, one painting was missing. They said they had it ‘in storage’ as there was no room for it - so why hadn’t they contacted me and suggested I bring it home? God knows what state it will be in. I will never loan paintings to restaurants again - they didn’t even try to sell them, just used them to decorate walls.

I contacted Perth Racing (lots of courage needed!) about a display at one of the courses - they are ‘keeping me in mind’ for the 2011 season. But I’m going to need to use some of the series that I’ve painted so far for the Celtic Swan Gallery. If they sell, well, we’ll see what happens.

I have sold two more paintings at recent exhibitions this month - “Cormorants at Cottesloe” at Trigg Art Exhibition and ‘Lady of the Banksias” at Wanneroo Art Society Exhibition. The latter is a red-tailed black cockatoo and she hasn’t even made it onto the website yet! I’m going to paint her again, in oils this time, as I love the pose, but I’ll give her a partner and make it an entirely different composition. I figure that people buy originals from me so it isn’t right that I should just paint another one exactly the same. Don’t think I could, anyway.

Because a couple of the exhibitions I’m planning to enter soon are college-based, I’ve been working on some pastel paintings featuring children at the beach. Yay - I’ve finally cracked it on how to paint water and the ocean!!! Mind you, I keep looking at the finished ones and thinking - gosh, did I do that? HOW did I do that?

Did you check out Ainslie Gilles website of her beautiful Arabians? She’s asked if I’ll do a website demonstration on painting an Arabian horse and has generously offered me a selection of her photos to use. I’m vacillating between two at the moment, and it won’t be done in a hurry, but I’ll get there eventually. Also, a good friend was showing me the fantastic photos he’s been taking of birdlife, breathtaking shots of birds in flight, so he’s also going to let me choose some of his work and I’ll incorporate them into future paintings. I’m really excited about that - I could see compositions zooming about in my head even whilst I was looking at the photos!!!!

That’s all for now. Happy Painting, everyone.