This year started of with great excitement for me: I had my first solo art exhibition.
Some time during the last year a friend of mine in an art group asked me a very important question, and I think the most important bit about it was how she phrased it.
She asked me : “Well, Jessica. Wouldn’t you have enough paintings by now for your own exhibition?”
Just a few words, but because she had asked so broadly I actually started thinking about it and counting the pieces I had painted over the last few years. I counted over twenty. And if that isn’t enough for a small solo exhibition, I don’t know what is. It still wasn’t an easy task for me, I had battled limiting self-talk and self-depreciating thought processes for quite some time and mustering up the courage to even ask the location took me a couple of weeks. The only condition that the venue put on me was to work the exhibition around an event if possible, to give it a theme so to speak. I did not want to choose Irelands mental health week in October because I did not want to take it away from the local mental health groups that usually exhibit there during that time so I picked the first two weeks of the next year to align myself with the First Fortnight Festival that highlights mental health and artists.
Now I am very glad it worked out this way, I would not have been mentally ready or even distanced enough from my art pieces to exhibit in autumn. But something shifted during the month of December, and I was able to really appreciate the work I had done over the last years and acknowledge the journey I had undertaken. I was ready now.
First I would like to share the flyer I made with the substantial help of my 12yr old son. He can use the program I needed to edit the flyer so much better than me... (this years to do list: learn how to use photoshop or equivalent)
My son also gave me a hand in typing out all the descriptions I wanted to place underneath each picture. I am not fond of art that induces questions but explains nothing. Some of the paintings I have already posted about here in the past.
At first I wasn’t sure in which order to place the artwork, and then decided to stick with the timing of them, in order of their making. Because each piece tells a different story and marks a different point in my personal development.
I made all of the pieces available for sale except these three. They are by far my favourites and most important to me. I wanted to have prints of them ready, but they were too large for the local printers scanner and I ran out of time to take proper photographs of them myself. So I decided to keep them a while longer... (to do list: learn how to operate the husbands mighty camera so I can take proper pictures of my own artwork...)
As wide an image as my phone would allow. I have another image that includes all the pieces... and a small boy that ran into the shot and that I couldn’t edit out...
All in all my first exhibition went really well I think. I had 15 paintings hung and over twenty people attending the official opening, not counting assorted children, and some of them had only returned home from abroad that same day. I sold 2 paintings and a lot of people bought prints of the works that I had, and I got my exhibition extended by another week as well. Plenty of visitors left lovely and open comments in the visitors book, I love reading them.
So now I can move on to another project that needs finishing up and that is already 3-4 years in the making. I will definitely post about it here once I am finished with that one and ready to go public ;-)
