muddy yellows.....

I have finally finished (sort of) my latest work. It is an atmospheric rendering of a Venitian canal scene. I will endeavour to upload a photo later.

Before I do that I have to send two works by courier tomorrow, deliver another six for an exhibition tomorrow evening, on thursday evening I have to be at an art sale I am taking part in, and I have another opening on Friday for another group show in which I am included (the six works I'm delivering tomorrow evening).

With all this going on I also need to arrange a studio viewing for a patron and arrange delivery or collection for two other works that need framing for Christmas.
I am told by one of my Galleries that there is a deposit paid on another work also, to be collected before Christmas.

With all the talk of World recession, it's very nice to be so busy. It just goes to prove, quality art will always sell, and in turbid times it is a realistic investment opportunity. I have however refrained from increasing my prices this year. Mainly because I feel in the current economic climate holding values is almost as good as increasing them. Although I absolutely refused to reduce them earlier on when some Galleries thought the economic downturn warranted lower prices. I believe I owe it to my collectors to protect their investments. Sadly I noticed recently some artists resorting to "half price sales" at an art fair, to the detriment of all the participants.
I am glad I was not taking part in the fair, for I feel all the participants, including high end galleries were tarred with the same brush, ie. Bargain basement art-works.

I am going to climb down off my soap-box now, and get back to work, I have been scrutinising the latest masterpiece, knowing there was a little something I wasn't happy with and I have just seen it. I need to adjust the tone slightly on the yellow, it is looking a little dirty/muddy, I overworked it during the mixing I think.

I'm back from Amsterdam.

I am just back from Amsterdam. I enjoyed the trip, and the Van Gogh museum, but I found many of the other visitors to the museum were quite rude, standing in front of you while you are looking at works or pushing ahead when there are queues. People can be very inconsiderate at times, but more so when they are abroad. It seems to be all nationalities too. I will go back again though. I did not go to the Reichsmuseum to see the works there as I had promised Christine a shopping trip to spend some of my recent earnings, which she managed to do of course :).
and she saved me over a hundred euro on a pair of boots, they were 30% off.....LOL. We travelled through every shoe shop in Amsterdam, some twice. At least it was only shoes she was buying, we did not have room for a lot of clothing in the bags as we only took carry on luggage, just enough for the 3 days, and she didn't see the Diamond she wanted, just as well.:).

We did a lot of walking and took a couple of boat trips around the canals.

The amount of houses leaning one way or another is amazing. Because the houses suffer from subsidence (built on wooden pilings in the sand in the 1600's) they are often held up by the neighbouring houses leaning into each other. Many roads are made up of higgledy-piggeldy house fronts, leaning forwards, backwards, to one side or the other or even all directions at once!.
It is definitely not a city for a perfectionist......or a structural survey engineer....

We had to take a walk through the red-light district while we were there, but it was a bit of a misnomer as a 'sex shop', you would see more flesh on the beach than was on view through the windows.

The seediness doesn't really show during the daytime, which is when we wandered through, more or less just to 'see it'. Our Hotel was well away from the area, although only 5-10 minutes away by tram, as we booked a hotel on hoofstratt, around the corner from the museums (2 minute walk). Even so we walked into the city center in a couple of hours....there are a lot of shoe shops on the way.... hence the difference between the tram time..... we also walked around looking at the sites and along the canals, the weather was quite pleasant.



Amsterdam does look very grey though, it may be brighter in summer, but I could see why Vincent Van gogh's colours were so dark and brown in his early works before he moved south. I would definitely reccommend the trip as a long weekend, mid-week break, but I would not suggest you try to get all the sights/museums in at once. Prices are comparable with Dublin eating out and drinking in Pubs in the main, but the flowers are a lot cheaper.