Dear Members,

Welcome to my first newsletter for OVAS as your new Chairperson . I hope you all had a good Easter break, if a somewhat cold and miserable one! But hopefully Spring is here and we can all look forward to an exciting summer of sketching and painting, taking advantage of our lovely East Devon surroundings to produce some great work for our annual exhibition in August.

Despite the heavy snow delaying things, we did finally manage to hold our AGM at the Institute on Friday 9th March 2018, with 22 members attending. The outgoing Chair , Mike Bird, reported on a successful year and thanked Phil Creek and the committee for their support. The election of officers was as follows:

 

Chairperson Penny Lamb

 

Treasurer Mike Bird

 

Programme Secretary Maureen Stone

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New committee member Kerry Johnstone

 

Secretary Jacqueline Ward re-elected

 

Membership Secretary Terry Davies re-elected

 

Publicity Alison Witchell re-elected

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Website Chris Poole re-elected

 

Library Carolyn Barker re-elected

 

Social Nickie Bitschi

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In my report as outgoing Programme Secretary I outlined the full programme of events that we had enjoyed over the previous year. The variety and quality of the artists we had attracted for our monthly demonstrations was appreciated by the membership and I was pleased to say that the workshops were all fully subscribed. These included a workshop with renowned artist Chris Forsey and two plein air painting days, one at Topsham and one at Sidbury Allotments. This is something that I am particularly keen to encourage as many people had not actually done this before but thoroughly enjoyed the experience. As the fees for quality artists are going up all the time, can I please encourage all members to attend as many meetings during the year as possible, and to encourage your friends in the society to also come. I would say that these meetings are a great opportunity for us all to learn new tips and techniques from professional artists which will benefit us in our own work.

 

Mike Bird , as acting treasurer since Tim Walker left in August, presented the accounts and reported a small surplus on the year’s activities. He talked about the committee’s proposal to buy a wall hung visual display unit to enable a clearer enlarged view of any demonstration. This would be funded from the money we have in our deposit account which at present is accruing minimal interest.

 

Terry Davies , the Membership Secretary has reported that OVAS now has 72 paid up members. But can I please ask you all to help in the various methods available to you to raise the profile of OVAS in your local community. We can take advantage of the gallery/shops/cafes/library facilities to display our work and possibly attract new members to the society over the coming year. Please also make use of our excellent website if you haven’t already done so as Chris Poole does a great job in keeping us up to date with the life of OVAS.

 

As usual at our AGM the members voted for their favourite entries to the competition for the Griffin Trophy entitled “Dreams”. There were 11 entries and the voting showed Ken Appleton’s drawing to be the winner by a small margin , which was fitting as we congratulate Ken on his 90th birthday year and still a very active painter – an example to us all!

 

We have just enjoyed our first workshop of the year, using pastels with Rebecca de Mendonca.

Our next workshop will be June 30th, doing plein air painting with Nick Watton at Beer. Last year’s plein air workshop with Nick was very popular, so if you would like to join this year’s workshop please contact Maureen Stone.

 

With my very best wishes to you all for a productive summer of art ,

Penny Lamb Chairperson