Two recent sales at the Belvidere Gallery, Aberdeen

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Ponte Sisto, oil on card, 12 x 14 cm, 2012 SOLD

 Heath, near Priai Mocambique, oil on card, 13 x 13 cm, 2012, SOLD

One the whole what sells of mine is a. brightly coloured, and b. relevant to the viewer - most obviously by representing a place they know and love.  There is also a quality aspect, but that is so subjective that it is hard to trace.

Both the pictures above were framed, which also helps.

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Stephen Walton Fine Art; galleries and dealers

Red, yellow and pink flowers, oil on card, 14.5 x 18 cm

Flowers, oil on card, 18 x 15 cm

 Chrysanthemums, oil on card, 13 x 13 cm

Yachts, Coney island, N.Y, oil on card, 15.5 x 11.5 cm

A Chinese Restaurant, East Village, N.Y, oil on card, 11.5 x 14 cm

Washington Square, Manhattan, N.Y., oil on card, 13.5 x 14.5 cm

These are six paintings selected by Stephen Walton for his gallery.

 He will be acting as a dealer for me in England. He is based in Bury, and can be contacted through http://www.waltonfineart.com/

He has made a nice selection, and has considerable experience, and I am optomistic that he will be able to place the pictures with buyers. he contacted me after seeing my work in the Royal Academy Summer show.

For North African pictures you can contact Rose Issa Art Projects in London. And the Union Gallery in Edinburgh`s Broughton Street also holds a number of my paintings.

Saachi

I am selling some work through Saachi now, but you can still contact me directly through Facebook if you are interested in buying any paintings- it makes no difference and will be cheaper as there would be no commissions to pay: http://www.saatchiart.com/profiles/portfolio/id/115898/p/2

A line of trees, Aguas Mornas; studio sale

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A line of trees, Aguas Mornas, oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm   - available

A successful picture, after a lot of messing around: my first effort was fussy. I had not properly identified my subject and the result was confused.

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The studio sale contines for a couple more weeks.

All the pictures labelled "Pochades" available on this site are offered at a special reduced rate of 70  pounds sterling or other currency equivalent plus 20 pounds post and packing for up to three pictures.

Please let me know if anything interests you.

Studio sale

 Pochades in a rack.

For the next four weeks all the pictures labelled "Pochades" available on this site are offered at a special reduced rate of 70  pounds sterling or other currency equivalent plus 20 pounds post and packing for up to three pictures.

Payment is by Paypal, cheque or SWIFT or direct transfer from a UK or Brazilian Bank.

Please contact me if you want more details or wish to see the pictures here in Florianopolis.

São Paulo

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Well, I spent most of last week visiting galleries in São Paolo, hoping to find someone to help show my work. Perhaps I got a lead, but I am not optomistic. I am not sure why it is so difficult here: my pictures are selling and are accessable. Perhaps it is simply that there isn't much of a market here, and this makes dealers nervous.

São Paolo is a loathesome place: a brutalised environment with no end of beggers and homeless people. It is highly polluted and I became ill there almost immediately.

However, there is a nice collection of paintings in the USP Muesum of Contemporary Art, itself located in a fine park. I liked seeing the calm Morandis and wonderful Pancetti.

Rio; selling work

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A view from Copaacabana, oil on card, 10.8  9.5 cm  AVAILABLE

My trip to Rio was a qualified success. I went to paint and see if I could find a gallery there to represent me.

The painting side went very well: after the first day, the weather was great, no-one mugged me, the natives were friendly and I came away with maybe five decent paintings: not a bad haul.

It's a great painting city:  insane mountains, sea, sunshine and very open people in a relatively small space. The people are friendly but not overbearing as they can be in the middle east. The only trouble is crime, and during the day, in the wrong place there's a fair chance you'll be annoyed by some kids trying to beg coins off you.

I spent Monday visiting little galleries in Copacabana and Ipanema. I visited about ten. There was some interest, but little real hunger. One of the gallery owners who liked the work remarked that it would be hard to display small paintings but it is clearly possible to use cabinets and group them to make them more prominent. I am confident that they will take off in the next two years.

I suspect there simply isn't a good art market in Rio. So I shall do what many have advised and make my way to Sao Paolo, and see if I have more luck there. The little pictures sell well when they are given the chance as gallery sales in Scotland and online show.

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Two From Pompeii

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Pompeii- near the amphitheatre, oil on card, 12.1 x 9.5 cm  unavailable

Pompeii- ruins, oil on card, 9.4 x 12.5 cm  -  available

 

Two from Pompeii, with brush for scale

Pompeii in November is really beautiful: there are few tourists and it's a joy to wonder about the ruins imagining life in Roman times.

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Paintings from this site are available for purchase: please click on the label "sale" below for details.

Three from Sicily; tourism, photography and plein air painting

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I took the ferry from Malta to Sicily, staying for a couple of days in spledidly sited former Greek Empire city of Syracuse, where Archimedes lived and which features ruins of some importance.

Much of the city has recently been restored, though the place still has some rough edges.

Three from Sicily (Syracuse and Taormina)

 

 

 

 

Corso Umberto I, oil on card, 13 x 9.6 cm - discarded

Greek Amphitheatre, Syracuse, oil on card, 9.5 x 12.6

I met a charming French-Spanish couple while painting here, at this greek Apmhitheatre, which is quite enormous. Thanks to them for buying me lunch. I hope they find this site.

 

View of Taormino, oil on card 12.6 x 9.5 cm    available

 

 

 

 

Taormino is one of those places that is so touristified that it is quite unpleasant, the entire length of the main street taken up with shops selling souvenirs. The tourist industry has this amazing capacity to destroy the places and cultures that it supposedly celebrates: everything becomes commodified, including aspects of interpersonal relations.

The views  from the town, however, are quite breathtaking.

My picture owes something to Kokoschka, the itinerant Austrian, whose painting journeys might become a model for me, along with Edward Lear and the Scotsman David Roberts.

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Digital cameras have made photography easy, cheap and fast and I see tourists, including myself, wandering about snapping away, scarely seeing the world save through a lens. Given that images of most places tourists visit, quite probably of superior quality, can be found on the web, their reason for snapping must really more to do with the desire to say "I was here", than to record or understand a place.

In the face of this barrage of fast photo images there is obviously place for slower, more considered meditation on places. Plein air painting provides this.

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These paintings are for sale- for 100 Brazillian Reals or equivalent in another stable currency (at the time of writing this is roughly 58 US$ or 42 Euros or 36 GB pounds). Post, packing and handling are not included.

More details can be found under the label "buying art", below: please contact me with any enquiries.

 

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Nineteen paintings from Malta and Italy

From top: row 1- Malta; row 2- Sicily (Syracuse and Taormina); row 3- Sicily (Catania); row 4- Naples and Pompeii; row 5- Rome.

Plein air paintings from recent travels, all oil on card. I've included sunglasses and my paint box for scale.

For more detailed descriptions, please see individual pictures, which I shall put online over the next few days.

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All these paintings are for sale, at 100 Brazillian Reals- or current US$, Euros or Sterling equivalent (as I write, 100 Reals converts to 59 US Dollars,  43 Euros or 37 GB pounds).

Payment is by cheque or SWIFT or direct transfer from a UK or Brazillian Bank. These prices do not include postage and packing/handling.

All paintings described as "pochades" or "postcards" are priced as above (100 Brazillian Reals or equivalent)

These prices are deliberately low because I am keen to make my work available to those on ordinary salaries and to people who are normally excluded from the pleasure of owning original artworks for reasons of price.

Buying work from this site

Most of the pictures on this site are available for purchase.

The small recent pictures (labelled "pochades") are currently priced at 100 Brazillian Reals (57 US $, 43 Euros or 36 UK pounds), and therefore represent excellent value for collectors.

The prices are set low to encourage new buyers and because I believe original art should be accessable to all.

Packing

Packing is usually 10 Reals for up to 5 pochades. (5.70 US$, 4.30 Euros, 3.60 UK pounds)

Postage outside Brasil

Fast postal rate is 60 Reals (up to 2 weeks) (34.13 US $, 25, 67 Euros, 21.38 UK pounds)

Cheap and slow is 15 Reals (takes up to a month) (8.53 US$, 6.42 Euros, 5.35 UK pounds)

I reccomend the fast rate of postage. It costs the same to send 5 pictures as it does to send one, so it makes sense to purchase several pictures at the same time.

Postage within Brazil is cheaper, but I do not have the prices to hand.

Total

The total cost of one picture is usually: 100 Brazillian Reals + 10 Reals Packing + 60 Reals postage= 170 Reals ( 96.70 US$, 72.73 Euros, 60.57 UK Pounds) .

Payment

In the UK, payment can be by cheque or direct transfer to my UK bank account.

In Brazil, payment can be by cheque or direct transfer to my Brazillian account.

Elsewhere, payment is by SWIFT transfer into a UK account.

Any questions?

Send any enquiries to me at Tadeusz598@yahoo.co.uk or telephone me on 55 48 3223 0461

Days, months, years

Ball pen on paper

This is a self-portrait showing how I am lying down.

I did this while waiting for my student to show. I have to repress the instinct not to doodle during lessons: the desire is especially strong with beginners who can be very tedious indeed. It's suprising how difficult learning a language is for most people, and it's surprising that people often don't realise how difficult it is, so they start language lessons with incredible optimism. But, unless they are motivated by the possibility of gain- such as the chance to study or work abroad, etc- they usually give up fairly soon on.

Anyway, lack of storage space means that most art I make now has to be small or disposable, which means the doodle is now re-habilitated as an art form for me. The internet has made looking at images, usually diminished and always pixillated, the norm and little works of art seem to suit the scale of the computer screen and its intimacy well.

With the internet much is lost- scale, texture, weight; but some things are gained- concision, accessability, speed. I miss the physicality of big painting, but I cannot add to an already big storage space problem by painting more.

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If anyone wants anything of mine from here or my Flickr site then drop me a line: the prices are so low they're almost shameful!

A path in the woods; paintings for sale

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A path in the woods, oil on card, 10 x 13.1 cm

Today's picture is straight from yesterday's list (no. 4).

I was totally undisturbed while working except by some midges who seem to hang about in a great clusters near these trees. They are very attracted to black clothes for some reason.

I don't think I have been so happy in the last few years as when painting outside. Meetings with others are so often marred by tensions. My increased inability to handle commonplace social tensions and my consequent preference for solitude is the sign of a failure on my part.

Today's picture looks set to be quite popular and I might do another, looking in the opposite direction.

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Almost all the pictures on this site are for sale; the prices for these little pictures (labelled "postcards", or "pochades") are about 55US$; postage and packing is an additional 10$.

I can take cheques or direct transfers from UK or Brazillian buyers, or SWIFT payments from other places.

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Trees behind a fence

Trees behind a fence, 35 x 40 cm, oil on canvas

A small painting (35 x 40 cm), again impressionist in method. I painted it plein air, listening to Roxy Music from the car.

I am priming some board to use as a support for a series of small pictures, about A5 in size. These will be readily affordable to collectors and easy to post. As my pricing is geared to the Brazillian market the pictures are particularly good value to overseas buyers: they will cost 100 Brazillian Reals (about 55US$ , 40 Euros, or 34 UK pounds) not including post and packing. Anyone interested should simply email me for details.

I can arrange framing- it is cleap to get good framing here and worth considering. It would probably cost an addtional 50 Reals, but I would have to check.

I believe in making art affordable, and available to those who are interested.

There exists a great deal of price snobbery in the art world- even a low priced paiting is unaffordable for most people. I think this has the net effect of damaging sales, leading to lower sales overall because it dissuades potential new buyers from entering the market. It seems to me wrong and, more importantly, foolish that an educated person on an average income, such as scoolteacher or book editor, should be unable to afford to purchase original works because of the art worlds pricing structure, which exists to maintain the prices already established artists and sustain the idea of "exclusivity".

The average jobbing artist, who is not a star, then, fails to sell and their work remains in storage for years on end because the galleries, and art world in general have conspired to maintian prices and failed to nurture a low-medium price market.

Or so things appear to me. Perhaps readers have another take on it?