The last few weeks have felt a whirl wind and I’m finally able to do a blog post about my solo exhibition!
My husband Nick and I drove up on the Sunday unloaded a whole van full of stuff and started to unwrap the paintings. Monday spent all day hanging the show.
The room is an old studio used by artists around a 100 years ago. Two doors along Turner had his studio! The high ceilings and homely but grand feel suited my work a lot more than a white square box type gallery.
We opened Tuesday morning and had our first visitor at 9am! In all we had 181 visitors over the 5 days. Which felt a good amount, enough time to speak to everyone 🙂
The Private View Tuesday evening I was incredibly nervous and couldn’t stop shaking! The unknown reaction of what people would think and whether they would buy as well. It felt as though I was hanging on the walls along side my paintings, incredibly exposing. But I needn’t have worried, the reaction was positive and overwhelming. I felt giddy with all the compliments about my work – with the amount I had painted in 8-12 months and the quality. Some said they thought I would be an old person because the paintings had a maturity – I’ll take that as a compliment! A huge boost which alleviated my fears and set me up for the rest of the show.
So many people came including my sister & her partner who flew over from South Africa to see it and support me. My mum also came so nice to share it with my family. Artists friends and people like the Haslemere Art Society ladies and Instagram and facebook ‘friends’ all made the effort to get up to London which I feel blessed for their support.
I was lucky to have Natalia on my side she worked hard to get her Chelsea/London contacts into my show, which really helped.
I sold 51 paintings which is AMAZING! So happy and pleased that my work is out there and being enjoyed.
I have worked very hard the past 5 months to paint enough and organise it all. Nick my husband also at the end worked full time on it and was with me throughout the show (a gem!)
It hasn’t put me off doing a solo show and I will do another in time.
We are hardly home and now preparing for the Surrey Open Studios, bring it on! I will post again about that soon.