LONG TIME NO SEE

After getting back on my feet and after life getting in the way yet again, I found wonderful and fruitful ways of continuing with my soothing balm, my painting and a new outlet to my creativity.

First came the new and wonderful pleasures of reencountering professional Life Drawing again. Driving in the dark for an hour round trip in all weathers did not dampen my thirst for the inner peace I get when in a likeminded group of people, listening to classical music in the focussed silence of the intense attention given by all to model, paper and pencil. Like being reborn. This came with the wonderful and ancien Derby Sketching Club. A massive and admiring thank you to all involved.

Exhibition included!

Also my favourite was the incredibly friendly and unassuming Alfreton Life Drawing Group. Amateurs with a common love for drawing, painting and art in general offered me another evening of wonderful friendship, laughter and unpaid-for opportunities to fill two sketch books with wonderful nudes.

The two groups together, similar but so different, offered me, unknown to them, the helping hand my battered soul craved. With them I managed to make it through the week during one of the most testing times of my private life.

And finally, a bit later on I was lucky enough to bump into Artstand, the local group of professional artists of incredible quality with whom came many opportunities to exhibit and to even sell!

To say the members of this group became good friends in a very short time is an understatement.

I still find quite mesmerising the fact that all artists I have encountered have been incredibly honorable, genuine and openly friendly from the first minute.

Massive thanks to all involved, artists and models alike. Whether knowing or unwittingly they have all cushioned my worst moments and helped me stay afloat in difficult times.

Now that I find myself far away from all of them, my heart still sits in those rooms, drawing, sharing the soothing silence, sharing some soothing banter, sharing an invaluable sense of belonging which can never be replicated elsewhere. Thank you.