I'm not backward in coming forward.

I recently sent an email to the Honorable Melanie Joly - Minister of Canadian Heritage offering her; or to be more accurate - the Canadian government,  my painting "Vote for Us" for £ 54,000.00 GBP.

I'll be honest - I wasn't expecting a reply - but via the Canadian government's Ministerial Correspondence Directorate , I was given a polite and encouraging response.

My favourite part of the response was this...

I am then encouraged to approach the National Gallery of Canada regarding the sale.

As brush-offs go it's rather a nice one.

So the history behind this...

On a whim or something like it, I decided that I would try and sell one of my pieces well above and beyond my normal asking price to one of the Governments of the world's top 10 economies (or a national collection). I picked "Vote for Us" as it's broadly political (and I'm approaching politicians). I also felt it fits with the current global political instability and increasing polarisation.

I chose £ 54,000 as my asking price on the following basis.

1. £ 27,000 (half the sum) is the current average annual earnings for an individual within the UK. That bit's for me. It guarantees me an income for a year - it's not greedy.
2. £ 27,000 would go to an arts-based community organisation or charity within Canada
3. I would agree to promote - for 12 months (with agreed weekly hours) Canadian arts and culture on social media channels. So - some of that £ 27.000 for me would be earned income.

I will be approaching the National Gallery of Canada as the next step, then - if I'm unsuccessful there- I'll move onto economy number 9.

So possibly - next stop Italy.

I'll be blogging on progress as I go. If you have any contacts or suggestions let me know by messaging me here or commenting on this blog.

I'd appreciate it if you could share this blog as well - and see where it gets 

​The slide show below is a brief illustration of the process I recently went through for a client.

The person concerned contacted me after seeing my work online - in particular my painting "Night or Day"

The difference was that they wanted a mural on the granite wall of their sun-room in their cottage near Liskeard in Cornwall.

So - my first step - come up with an idea...

I  know Liskeard a little and having scanned through my client's facebook photos came across a view of Trethevy Quoit - not far from their house. It's a neolithic tomb dating to around 3500 BC. I found a reference photo and messed around with it digitally and sent some results (including the image in the featured slide show )

 
I sent the digital ideas - and luckily the comment came back "you must be some sort of mind-reader". That was a good start.

The next issue was the size (or rather the shape) of the proposed mural - a square of about 4' x 4' (120cm x 120cm) - so the use of a sun or moon in that format needed a rejig. That's the two square sketches. The second was a 1/3 wax and wash 'sketch' - after visiting the client at home we agreed on the design. One thing we agreed on was that the mural should have some semblance of a stained glass window. (hence the use of dark outlines on the main objects) and be a stylised representation.

We then had to leave things for about a month as I went off on holiday and it was convenient for everyone.

In the interim I produced full size cutouts for the main shapes and at the beginning of September set off for Liskeard for the first of six visits. I had researched mural painting in acrylic as  well as I could and took advice from a few people.


The slide show gives a reasonable idea of the process. The most interesting challenge was the highly pitted nature of the granite wall. Some of the lumps and bumps are over an inch deep. The inherent bonus in that is the natural 3D effect that the rock surface gave to the overall painting - especially when seen in reality. The mottling gave interesting colour effects as well, as the light changes in the space - the colours seem to change and shift. I also used a new tool - a herring gull feather used like a quill pen to give the crazed effect.

The final coat of varnish was done on Day 6. The client is very happy with the work. From my viewpoint it was a great piece of work to do from planning to completion, it was quite hard work physically as I used muscles I had forgotten about.

​From a calling card point of view it's brilliant as it's the first thing any caller to their house sees.

​I'd do it again...

Just ask me here