Patchings Art Festival

I've made my annual pilgrimage to Patchings Art Festival and come back laden with goodies and some brilliant bargains.

Apart from anything else it's a wonderful place to find out about new art materials and to try before you buy.

Whilst the main focus is on painting there are a significant number of artists showing other crafts like silk painting, felting and ceramics.  I managed to find some lovely hand dyed yarns in small quantities.

The highlight of my day was watching Ann Blockley give a demonstration.  How she can manage to talk to an audience of over 300 and paint at the same time beats me. I looked at Ann's technique in Project 3 (Daring Colour) and marvelled at her loose flowing style.  It was quite remarkable to actually see it happen.  At first the paint seemed to go on the paper in an almost arbitrary fashion and it was quite alarming.  Ann waited for an image to emerge and then took steps to define it better.  Her sense of colour is wonderful and very courageous and her comment "it's not subtle" was quite an understatement.

Ann painted two pictures; one of a bluebell wood and the other of poppies.  I found these on her website of similar subject matter.

Poppy field

Bluebell Wood

I just like this one.

Woodland Cottage

Watching what can be done with mixed media makes me think that at some time I'd like to have a go and see what I can do.


In the artists tent there were many styles to see.  I particularly liked Carol Baker's work.  It has a similar loose style to that of Ann Blockley.  These are both oil on canvas.

True Brilliance

Dancing with Hues

I had a brilliant day.