The Mayfair Art Collective
The Mayfair Art Collective’s very first exhibition just happened: sharing walls with some of my favorite artists, being able to gather and celebrate seeing paintings in the flesh with close friends was such a delight. I couldn’t wait to share more pictures and insights with you through this newsletter.
The Iron Duke: 11 Avery Row, Mayfair
21.06-27.06 Extended until Friday 02.07
Daily 12pm-10pm
@mayfairartcollective
Susan M Wallis and I had met in 2019 at the two-person show A Painted Touch of Life that I shared with Inma Garcia-Carrasco. In early 2020, Susan started to run life drawing sessions and free-form painting events in The Iron Duke pub, Mayfair. We ended up being a few ‘regulars’ sharing drawing and painting moments in the pub, which naturally took friendship to the next level! When the lockdown started to ease, Susan reached out to us with the exciting idea of putting on a show together in the bootroom. What a difference it made, after the challenging year we’ve all been through, to start having deadlines and events to look forward to.
Needless to say we aimed to make it special, beyond a simple gallery exhibition. Our wish was to get people together and bring art to the neighbourhood, in a warm and approachable way (Mayfair is full of commercial gallery, and to my experience they sometimes appear harder to relate to). We programmed some events to happen throughout the exhibition, but also decided to meet for some Plein Air paintings every weekend running up to the show. I particularly love this painting Tristan created one morning.
I do love an exhibition, and I do also enjoy the work needed to make it happen, beyond the paintings: writing a press release, designing some print material, curating and hanging the work. All of that in wonderful company: Susan and her two daughters are genuinely a joy to be with, and their hard work is humbling. Also really pleased to spend the hanging weekend with my amazing painting buddy Tristan: a 48h hours that got us properly knackered but translating into wonderful memories.
The morning of the opening, the fatigue and apprehension made me start questioning my paintings; I know those thoughts are unfortunately common and unhelpful so I tried to not give them much attention. Turned out I had not chance but being actually overwhelmed by the warm feedback we received! I’m so grateful so many people dared braving the rain, and felt really encouraged by people’s appreciation for the work. It felt so very special sharing this moment with friends, their support is always so precious.
Back to the gallery on Thursday evening for a Portrait Sketch session. Susan, Andrew, Tristan and I had a wonderful evening offering visitors quick portrait sketches and discussing the art. Fair to say such events always feel a little daunting at first (what if suddenly I forgot how to draw?) but the warm of the interactions is always indescribably inspiring and much deeper than just a sketch. So big thank you to everyone that came to this evening!
Another event on Saturday, and this time we took the paint out! 7 of us spent the afternoon outside, drawing and painting our two models Alice and Claire. It had been a long time since I last had a chance to work from life for this long and with a professional model (Alice is the best!). I took the opportunity to give a go to aluminium, a surface I had not painted on before. I did like working on this grey ground, but saw the temptation of smoothing a little too much in the first minute so later tried to hold on from overworking areas. Unfortunately this painting didn’t get a likeness of Alice, but what a joy to find all the colours!
This Saturday also happened to be my 27th birthday! I’m rarely keen to celebrate but this year I wasn’t given much choice as Susan made sure I felt like a princess, definitely did! What a joy to spend this day doing what I love the most with wonderful friends. And as if it wasn’t already perfect, I happened to sell a painting on this evening!
Susan is also already starting to design the next exhibition, likely to happen in September- and in the meantime more art has just been hung up the walls of the Bootroom. I’m so very grateful that a first encounter is now leading to such wonderful opportunities. Like, SO GRATEFUL!
Now.. I’ll try to catch up on some sleep before starting the exhibition-machine all-over again in view of the Now We Are Six exhibition coming up in September! More info on that one soon~
With the wonderful Susan M Wallis