Today is World Art Day. It falls on April 15 each year, chosen because that is famous artist Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday.
World Art Day is an international celebration of the fine arts, which was declared by the International Association of Art, a partner of UNESCO, to promote creative activity worldwide.
The theme for this year’s World Art Day is “A Garden of Expression: Cultivating Community Through Art.” Now, I don’t usually paint gardens as such, so the best I’ve been able to do is to zoom in on a couple of my pictures where there are at least some snippets of garden!
This rather spartan garden features in a painting I did of the Greek island of Santorini.I did this pen and wash picture of an old house in Haywards Heath (UK) many years ago. The garden appears rather wild.
As the year draws to a close, I decided to compile a round-up of all the paintings I’ve done this year.
I was astonished to find that I completed 16 paintings in 2023! These included pictures of:
three trains
three ships and boats
six police cars
a bus
a stagecoach
an Antarctic base
an orca
and even a Buzzy Bee!
You can click on most of the following images to be taken to the blog posting I made at the time to describe the subject and to outline my process for that particular painting.
1. I had a couple of my artworks in the Kapiti Arts & Crafts Society oils and pastels exhibition at the Coastlands Shopping Mall in Paraparaumu. They didn’t sell, but it was still interesting to hear people’s comments about my orca and my flying boat.
My two paintings at the Kapiti Arts and Crafts Society’s exhibition at Coastlands, Paraparaumu.
2 I was privileged to be one of the local artists selected for the opening exhibition of the newly revamped Toi Mahara Gallery in Waikanae. My pictures of the ‘Endeavour‘ and Queen’s Wharf look terrific under the purpose-built lighting of a professional gallery.
A proud artist at open night of the Kapiti Arts Review exhibition at the Toi Mahara Gallery in Waikanae.The stunning newly refurbished Toi Mahara Gallery in Waikanae.
3. I took part in the Kapiti Arts Trail over the weekend, with six of my plane and ship artworks on show at the Big Mac Creative Centre. I was also “artist in action” at the centre for a few hours, so was able to chat to lots of visitors whilst I worked on my latest painting. I’ll be doing it again next Sunday for the second weekend of the Arts Trail.
Hard at work as “artist in action” painting a picture of Evans Bay, Wellington.The Big Mac Creative Centre has a nice airy space for artists to demonstrate their work.
4. I had a display of my five police car pictures at the Greg Gilpin Charitable Trust fund-raiser event at The Pines in Wellington. This was to promote sales of prints of my pictures, half the proceeds of which will go to this trust that helps Wellington police members in need, for example, medical issues.
My five pictures on display, plus a couple of examples of what the prints look like when they’re framed.
I am really excited today, as the Auckland-based company Art Collective have just loaded a whole swag of my paintings onto their website to sell as fine art prints for Fathers Day.
There are now 17 of my paintings of planes, trains and ships on the Art Collective site! They include the above picture of an Air New Zealand plane making a bumpy descent over Evans Bay towards Wellington Airport.
Art Collective’s giclee fine art prints are done with archival ink on acid-free art paper. They’re available in A2, A3 and A4 sizes, framed or unframed, priced from $39 to $230, and with free shipping in NZ. They can also ship overseas at cost.
I’ve put together this one-minute video where you can see all 17 of these paintings.
Below is another of my 17 paintings: the Lockheed Constellation that my late father-in-law used to fly for the British airline, Skyways of London, landing at Manchester under the watchful gaze of a trio of young plane-spotters.
This morning I spent an enjoyable couple of hours chatting with well-known heritage transport painter, Wallace Trickett, at his Otaki studio.
Wallace is a fount of knowledge for a relative newbie like me. I picked up many practical tips from him, and enjoyed learning about his past careers as a marine engineer, newspaper cartoonist, bus driver, and finally in 2009 as a fulltime painter.
Wallace spent five years working as a marine engineer for the Blue Star Line. This inspired one of his major projects, a portrayal of each of the ships that the company has owned since they started in 1911.
In a similar vein, he is now working on a series of paintings depicting the various buses operated over the years by the company he was a driver for.
In 2010, two of his paintings were mentioned in the London Battle of Britain Ceremony. These paintings were commissioned by Air Marshal Sir Keith Park’s family and depicted the Southern Railway locomotive named after him.
Wallace painted the largest transport mural in the country, with his racing track montage at the Southward Car Museum. He also worked with students at Otaki College in 2016 to produce a mural depicting the school’s connection with Scotland’s Robert Gordon’s College.
It was a real treat to see some of Wallace’s amazing paintings of ships, buses and trains in real life that I had only seen online.
ROLY'S ART 