Category Archives: Events

Teeny Weeny Swimmers

I am painting teeny weeny swimmers!
These are more 4 inch square ‘Mini Swimmers’. The mini swimmers all started when Glastonbury Galleries put on an ‘Anonymous Art’ show two years ago, where they asked lots of artists to create 4 inch square artworks, and sold them all framed the same size and unsigned. I did paintings in watercolour and gold leaf. These ones are not the actual paintings I’m putting in this year’s exhibition, I’ve done something slightly different… though you will all probably guess which mine are in any case I expect.
These paintings will be for sale in the end, but there is a lot of work to do before they are finished…. I know you like a bit of work in progress.
Oh, and I even have a few paintings of chaps as well, but not many as the un-wetsuited ones I know mostly swim at Clevedon and that’s rubbish for underwater photography!

: Mini swimmers – work in progress – the first layers of watercolour

: Mini Swimmer – work in progress

: Mini swimmer paintings

: Adding gold leaf

: Gold leaf with excess brushed off

: More gilding on a different mini painting

Prof Wolf’s Evening of Medicine, Music & Channel Swimming

Join us for a fantastic evening of talk, Q&A, live music, and cake!

Sunday 19th May 7.30pm
Cossham Hall, Chapel Street, Thornbury, BS35 2BJ

Professor Andy Wolf recently retired from a career in medicine and proudly became the oldest
man to solo swim the English Channel in 2018 whilst raising funds for revolutionary 3D printing
technology for children’s cardiac surgery at the Bristol Children’s Hospital.

In his fascinating talk Prof Wolf will take us through the trials and tribulations of the training and competition of his Channel swimming exploits.

We will also be treated to explanations about the revolutionary 3D printing technology that Prof
Wolf is helping to fund-raise for and develop which is enabling surgeons at the Bristol Children’s
Hospital to print exact models of patient’s hearts so that they can plan and practice complex
surgeries. The 3D printing will also allow surgeons to bio-print using stem-cells, meaning that
the implanted organ grows with the child and never needs replacing.

Prof Wolf’s talk will be interspersed with live music on a watery theme from local musicians and
the opportunity to enjoy some lovely homemade cakes followed by Q&A

Tickets £6.50, available here.
(school age children go free)

Skinny Dipping: a hypothesis

Sophia, swimming

2 Replies

Sophia, swimming. Digital drawing by Nancy Farmer

Little commission I completed a few weeks ago – a digital drawing. And yes, you can ask me to match your wallpaper / paintwork as Sophia did, as long as you can send me a sample of the colour.

A little point here – I do know some artists would be outraged at the very thought of being asked to create art to match the decor, but seriously, would you go into a gallery and say, “I’d like to buy that painting, it’s lovely and it will look absolutely awful in my front room”. If it‘s a commission, an artist should be able to fulfil a brief be it subject, colour, size or whatever, or they are just pleasing themselves… and there’s another word for that 😉

Just saying this, as sometimes I think people are worried about getting a stroppy reply if they ask a question like that. If you do, find someone else to ask….

Changing a brief half way thorough is another matter we needn’t go into here (because this was not the case!). This was a lovely drawing to do, helped in part because of the natural grace in the initial photos I worked from.

Mind you, I can invent grace, where necessary. Trust me, I’m an artist 😉

How to Stay Dry on Clevedon Beach

The difference between Girls & Boys

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I’m an artist: I’m not obliged to be politically correct, or even accurate, but there is a difference between girls and boys when it comes to cold water swimming. There is one thing that girls are so much better at. Faffing.

People ask me why there aren’t many pictures of men in my paintings, there aren’t actually many of the male persuasion in our group, it is true, but another of the reasons for it is they simply aren’t there. We’ve no sooner arrived at our lake, said hello, caught up on the week, the weather, measured the temperature of the water, discussed the possibility of wearing gloves or not wearing gloves, admired a new bobble hat or two, a bikini, somebody’s homemade cake, repeated the water temperature to newcomers, compared the readings on a couple of auxiliary thermometers, discussed the water temperature with those leaving the vicinity and shared a couple of hilarious stories about pants…. and we look up and find that the boys have just got in and started swimming! There they are, half way to the other side of the lake. And we have so far succeeded in removing our bobble hats and locating our cossies. If we are organized.

So now you know. One thing boys aren’t very good at.

This is Chris on the steps and Andy, already swimming. Andy was last year’s oldest person to swim the English Channel, solo, and he probably didn’t stop to swap stories about pants even then.

The difference between Girls and Boys

Commission: Helen Betley’s Windermere swim, with a lot of gold leaf

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Thought you might like to see a painting I finished before Christmas. Last year, Helen Betley swam the length of Windermere… butterfly! Her husband asked if I could paint a painting of the swim. I don’t generally do landscape paintings, (as actual paintings, rather than digital drawings) but I do do a lot of figure drawings, and gold leaf, so I suggested this combination as a bold composition, rather than a straight painting of someone swimming. All the leaf is gold, the different colours are different alloys of gold, and it’s all applied piece by piece, with a paintbrush as it’s too delicate to pick up. The rest is pencil and a watercolour wash, and the little folly is really there on the shore of Windermere, but I added the inscription in my drawing, as a detail to commemorate the swim.

All the photographs are of the same painting – the gold leaf changes so much with different light you may think there is more than one version.