Pittenweem Art Festival

I haven't much progress to report on my painting, I have been spending my time looking at other art instead!  Every year, a local fishing village holds a week-long arts festival and it is an amazing event. 

It seems that every cottage has a room/garage/garden/loft given up to an artist who showcases his or her paintings.  As well as those, there are invited artists who also have art on show.  This year, Helen Delerney who makes large life-sized sculptures of animals out of scrap metal.  They were placed on and around the harbour wall.  As you can see, the weather turned very wet, but it didn't stope everyone enjoying the art on display!

Indoors, there were a wide range of paintings to be seen, using many media, from watercolour, textiles, acrylic to oils and resin as well as collage and mixed media.  In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at the increase in collage over the years.  I can remember when it was very rare and rather looked down upon!

One of my favourite exhibits was by ceramicist, Craig Mitchell, who made these fantastic large ceramic sculptures with even larger-than-life character.  The above is over 2 feet tall and shows two Frenchmen frantically rowing out to sea on a French Fancy cake.  Stunning.  This other piece, Fisherwife Presenting the Jazz Prawn is just delightful.  He also had a man in a kilt, a flying Scotsman, a hunter, a fisherman and many others, each perfectly designed and made, full of quirky detail and humorous.

It was much harder to photograph the paintings, difficulties with crowds, lighting and shadows made it nearly impossible, but here is a small sample of some others I did manage to capture:

Above, the Lomonds by Josephine Gillespie - a very prolific and versatile painter with a wonderful sense of colour.

Underneath, a collection of almost abstract landscapes by Mairi Clark that really caught my eye, they seemed to say more about what is just in front of us, but also to suggest a feeling and emotion that the landscape invokes.

There were over 100 exhibits and I only managed to see a quarter of these - I am hoping to get back again next week to see some more, even if it cuts into my limited painting time.