The Art Trail tale

The Artists preparation, thoughts and doubts while preparing for this years Art Trails.

Spring time is here bursting on us with sunshine, bright green leaves and extraordinarily bright flower colours that we may have forgotten during the long dark winter. Spring time goes hand in hand with the start of a long list of art trails, where local artists share their works, enthusiasm, and joy of their craft. The art trails may seem like a sudden burst of energy just like spring. However, for the exhibiting artist the journey for this year's events started about 8 months ago with the commitment to partake, submitting photographs, finding co-exhibitors and creating new art work. As you can imagine this requires organisation and anticipation of obstacles (more about this later).

This year I will be exhibiting alone at my Henley Arts Trail venue for the first time (Venue 30). All other years I have had two -three other artists exhibiting with me in the garden, but due to my daughters A-levels this year, I made a big promise not to use the house and back garden. This led to some thinking and to the idea that opening my workshop would provide exhibition space and that it would be interesting for visitors to see the tools and place of artistic creation. Personally, I have always loved to visit artists workshops and find that there is such an inspiring creational vibe and feel for the workflow. I am writing this just a few days before the start of the Henley Arts Trail - I'm on the train to London Goldsmith Company to pick up the last hallmarked jewellery pieces to complete the exhibition.

This brings me back to the previously mentioned organisational skills. Despite every year promising myself to be more organised, and hopefully getting increasingly better, there are still hurdles in the run up (like handing jewellery in for hallmarking in good time). I think these go hand in hand with increasing ambitions and a desire to make a really great exhibition that will give visitors a memorable and joyful experience. I know that I share this trait with many fellow artists, as the joy of sharing is balanced by the sudden onset of doubts - what am I doing? -I really hope it is good enough? will people come? But when the day comes and the first visitors arrive it's just great. I find the genuine interest, enthusiasm and questions from my visitors fun, invigorating, and inspiring. It is enriching to observe what others read into your work and that you may in reality only have seen a few angles among many other viewpoints.

So in short, art trails are wonderful days both for visitors and artists. I hope you will have the time to enjoy these days out and support your local artists.

Click here to see a list of upcoming exhibitions and art trails for Harmattan Jewellery.