Dear Members,
Despite all the difficulties we have experienced during Lockdown, it was wonderful to be able to hold our annual exhibition at the Institute in person this year, and meet face to face again after all this time!
I would like to congratulate all of you who came up trumps and entered work into the exhibition, much of it produced during the months in isolation. Thank you for stewarding the exhibition , and managing the new method of payment through the card machine, without too much difficulty . I think you will all join me in thanking the committee and helpers for putting together such a successful event.
I would like to thank local artist Matthew Davison for stepping into the breach as judge at short notice when , due to unforeseen circumstances, Julie Dunster had to pull out.

The preview evening went well and the prizewinners who were not able to attend have now been given their trophies. The prizewinners were as follows:

Valerie Faulkner received the Alwyn Crawshaw Award for Acrylics with ‘Bit Fishy’

Linda Hampson received the Otter Award for Drawing with ‘Busybees’

Nickie Bitschi received the Society’s Award for Pastels with ‘Still Life’

Penny Lamb received the Alice Comont Cup for 3D with ‘The Bothy’

Ann Brown received the Janet Langmaid Award for Mixed Media with ‘Sidbury Allotments’ Celia Risso received the David Young Award for Oils with ‘River Otter

Pat Foster received the Leonard Pargiter Award for Watercolours with ‘Iris’.

Congratulations to you all, and to several people who were commended for their work.

You can see some lovely photos of the prizewinners and their work put on the website by Chris Poole, our resident photographer!

Congratulations also go to one of our newer members , Robin McIntyre, who exhibited for the first time ever, and won the popular vote by a long way, with his excellent portrait of Terry Thomas, the well known actor. Maureen Stone and Carolyn Barker were the runners up.
You might be interested to know that 30 of our 58 paid up members submitted work . of these 16 sold one or more of their items . 33 items sold, of which 8 were unframed, and the total sales value was £2,895. Compared with our 2019 exhibition, although the number of entry fees and guests through the door were down, the value of sales was up. So Mike Bird, our treasurer, is pleased that the Society will just about break even on the exhibition.
 

In other news, thank you for all your support over the lockdown period with our Zoom demonstrations. We are now beginning to get back to welcoming artists in person again, so don’t forget that we have the wonderful Hester Berry demonstrating for us at the Institute on Friday 3rd September 2021 at 19.30pm. Hester will also be running a workshop for us next February, so watch this space!
At the Sept demo I will also be telling you more about our November demonstrator, Vicki Norman, who will be running a workshop for us on Saturday 13th November, after her demonstration on the Friday afternoon, of a seascape, with special reference to colour mixing. There is quite a lot of interest in this workshop, so do bring your cards on 3rd Sept to pay a deposit to secure your place on the list!
Many of you will be pleased to hear that the Tuesday painting group (open to members), will be starting up again on 14th September, at the cricket club,
Ottery St Mary, and will be run by Chris Poole from now on. We thank Maureen Stone for her hard work in previously running the group.
Meanwhile, happy painting,and see you soon.
With best wishes,
Penny Lamb