120th Pastel Society Annual Exhibition - Prizewinners

muonnhatnews
7 Feb, 2019
The Pastel Society is holding its 120th Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries.  
The first thing I want to say is "Congratulations!" for two reasons:
  • First obviously for making it to its 120th annual exhibition. There's an awful lot of art societies that don't make it that far - or even anywhere near!
  • Next because they have all the details about the exhibition, the prizewinners, the events etc on the website right now - and that information has been available since the day after the private view. So big pat on the back for the webmaster!

The Private View was held on Monday (which I unfortunately couldn't attend as I was unwell) and opened by Alistair Burtenshaw Director of Watts Gallery - Artists' Village. (GF Watts was one of the founding members of the Pastel Society in 1898).

However I got to see it on Tuesday - and hope to be back again before it closes.

This year the exhibition is being sponsored by Derwent - and I do like the way the Pastel Society shares around the opportunity to be sponsor!

Tonight is the The Pastel Society Art Event Evening 2019 - but there are still plenty of events to come - and these are listed at the end

Exhibition

One of the best exhibits on this wall I've seen in a while
You can see the exhibition at the Mall Galleries from today until 3pm on Saturday 3rd March 2018.

You can get Free Entry to the exhibition for Two if you mention Making A Mark at the Gallery Desk (normal price £8)

It includes 281 artworks in total, of which 180 are by members (64%) and 101 are by nonmembers (36%) - in pastels, charcoal, conte chalk, pastel pencils, coloured pencils, Pierre Noire pencil, Graphite, oil pastel and mixed media (which should be predominantly dry)

There are LOTS of ways to view the artwork if it's too far or too expensive to get to London to see the exhibition. You can also:
The only problem with digital versions of the exhibition is you don't get the sense of scale that you get when you see the work in the gallery.

I'm going to leave a review of the "open" aspect of the exhibition until after I go back (I thinking about drawing plants in the gallery on Saturday morning and then having another meander around in the afternoon)

However I will say it's very well hung - you can see that the small team that hung it got the colour balance right. It's also got more contemporary work which is good to see and a fair few red spots!

Plus the end wall is sensational! I recognised the work by Patricia Cain and Jeanette Barnes (left of centre) straight away - but was greatly intrigued by the vivid green artwork - which came from the open entry!  Apparently Carla Groppi won the The Hugh Casson Drawing Prize at the RA Summer Exhibition in 2015.  David Brammeld is doing a session on drawing trees on Saturday afternoon for those who want to learn how to draw trees in winter.

The end wall with work by
(left to right) two works by Patricia Cain, who won the 3rd Threadneedle Prize in 2010
a very large charcoal drawing of the Crossrail Station, Canary Wharf by Jeanette Barnes (an ex tutor of mine),
an extremely vivid work by Carla Groppi and a suite of four works of trees by David Brammeld
Bookshop and view of main gallery gallery
The shop as always has a fair few books relevant to the exhibition. I rather liked this view

Prizewinners

You can see large images of all these paintings in the Mall Galleries facebook Album for 2019 Prizewinners. Each image links to the "buy" page for that artwork.

You can also see images of all the award winners at the Private View on the website

I found most of the artworks - so you can see them in their frames with the award label next to them.
READ MORE......>>
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