charity – The Consulting Artist

The Garden

Gardens are lovely places. Space to wander, think, breathe, remember, and more. I’m not a keen gardener but I am thankful to have some outside space to escape to.

In my role as Artist In Residence with GameShift – I’ve recently had the opportunity to artistically explore the garden as a place of remembrance. I’ve been working with some good people at Barts Hospital, designing an image to represent an online garden of remembrance. I chose to work in a representational style using ink and watercolour. Not my usual thing – but very little feels usual right now, so I used this as an opportunity to stretch myself and to hone my drawing skills a little too. Here’s what I came up with:

I showed the work to the people at Barts, and I got some positive feedback and was asked to add some flowers into the mix. Flowers eh – good idea. See, I told you I’m not a keen gardener 🙂 A few flowers duly appeared:

The design will now form part of Barts Hospital’s online garden of remembrance. I found the evolution of the design and collaboration process very calming, and I hope a sense of that is conveyed in the art work.

Having spoken with the staff at Barts Hospital – we have agreed to raffle the original art work to raise funds for Barts Charity. The art is A4 in size, painted using Winsor and Newton watercolours, and drawing pens, on 300 gsm watercolour paper. The art is unmounted to make it easer to ship – and it will be accompanied by a signed certificate of authentication.

Tickets for the raffle cost just £3 each and are available here until 10.30pm on Friday 26th June 2020. I hope you will consider supporting this idea, enjoy the art, and good luck in the raffle.

The treasure of a life
Is a measure of love and respect
The way you live, the gifts that you give

In the fullness of time
A garden to nurture and protect
It’s a measure of a life
The Garden : N. Peart

Thank You

After some encouragement from good people in my network, I designed a 2018 calendar featuring some of my free art project work. Over 40 were sold, thanks to everyone who purchased a copy.

In today’s post – I received an important piece of paper, namely the receipt for a charitable donation of £176, paid to the good people of Wallington Animal Rescue, which was made possible through sales of the aforementioned calendar.

This has been a fun thing to do. Curating the art work itself, compiling a set of notes telling the story of the art, and finding a way to make the product has been an enjoyable challenge. On the last point, I learned enough to ensure that if I repeat the experience, I should be able to deliver a similarly good quality product, at a slightly lower cost. That means I can offer the calendar slightly cheaper, or alternatively, raise more for a charity next time.

Thank you to everyone who supported the calendar project, and thank you Wallington Animal Rescue for the excellent work you do.

We Are All Artists : 2018 Calendar

Eighteen months ago, someone who follows the free art project suggested I make a calendar. It was a good idea, and I didn’t get round to it. Wind forward a year and the same person kindly offered up the suggestion again. This time, I paid attention, and after several hours of curating, and playing with various online layout tools, I ordered a few proofs. My intention was to use the calendar as a fund raising opportunity, and because of this – the price of the finished product was a factor.

This version looks lovely, it is really well made and gave me a lot of design flexibility, however the price per unit was over £20 – well beyond what I figured people would pay. In the end I settled for a calendar which is good quality, and even though the layout design was fiddly, I managed to select twelve artworks which captured the local area and the spirit of the free art project.

I’m selling the calendar as above, in my Etsy shop for £17 plus P&P with a donation of £4 to Wallington Animal Rescue. Each calendar is signed and accompanied by a set of art notes to give each image more context. So far we’ve raised £148 for the charity, and I have a few calendars remaining. If you want some cool art on your wall and you’d like to support an excellent small charity doing great work – feel free to place an order. Thank you.

And what will become of the proof I showed you? That is being given away as part of the free art project, so if you live locally, keep an eye out for it.