nancy farmer . net

Welcome to my Gallery

Belligerent demons, sullen fairies, twisted fairytales and other curious monsters - dark, whimsical, decadent contemporary art, all with a satirical edge and a twist of humour.

September 2nd

Cheap things!! I'm trying out Ebid, and in an attempt to get my little shop going over there I have quite a few things at reduced prices. Have a look here to find links to my 'stores'. More listings on the way...

September 1st

I have another exhibition: Somerset Art Week is running again from 13th to 28th September 2008. And as before I shall be exhibiting all my available paintings that I can lay hands on, and will also have prints, cards and calendars for sale. For more information please visit my Future Exhibitions page.

August 18th

I have Calendars! Yes, yes I know it's only August, but I can do these either for the 2009 year, or the academic year 08-09, for which they will be just about in time. And this time I actually have the calendars - they are available directly from me. They are even signed on the back! I've mede these up to my own design, and they contain not 12, but 14 interchangeable pictures. They are currently listed only in my Etsy Shop, but as soon as I get round to it I will put a page here. In the meantime, please see the blurb in the shop, and if you'd prefer to get one straight from me, just drop me an email. I have one with my paintings in, in large and small size, and even a small size dolls one.

August 1st

I don't often do illustrations, but this one was fun! This is an illustration I did a few months ago for Sci Fi / Fantasy / Horror anthology 'Murky Depths' (issue 5) - click the thumbnail to read more or, as usual, visit my new work page to see all the new things

June 21st

New pictures: I've been sneaking a few new things onto the website - well, sneaking is maybe not quite fair - but anyway - they have been getting here without my getting round to actually mentioning them on the front page, so I have a little catching up to do. I have yet another new Medusa painting - 'Medusa's Gimps' - where Medusa finds a new vocation in life (and a develops a new-found taste in slightly tacky interior decor).
Then there were the Origami Mermaids - done especially for Gallery 303's summer exhibition entitled 'Fish and Ships'
And finally - I said I'd never do them, but you don't want to believe everything I say - I completed the first couple of Platinum Fairies, as something of a celebration to mark the completion of the 50th 'Gold Fairy'. you can see these on the Gold Fairies page. To date I have got so far as Platinum Fairy number 1 and number 2, and at present one has been sold and one is on display in Gallery 303, so I have none here at all, but as I have still a few small sheets of platinum leaf I think there will be a few more Platinum Fairies before too long... click the thumbnails or visit my new work page to see all these new things.

June 28th

Lots more cards: I have updated my greetings cards page with lots more cards. Some cards are brand new, and some I just hadn't got round to telling everyone about. There are now nearly 50 images as cards, and I've made the page less fancy but easier to keep up to date. Please note - some of the cards I have in VERY small numbers (like about 5, at present...) however, I hope I have guessed the popular ones and got lots of them.

Thank you to everyone who came to my exhibition at Glastonbury!. It was lovely to see people. The next exhibition will be as part or Somerset Art week in September - see my Exhibitions Page for details.

May 20th

'Hell and High Tea'
- Solo Exhibition in Gallery Eight, Glastonbury, UK.
Tuesday June 3rd - Saturday June 15th
I have hired the upstairs room of Gallery Eight, and will be displaying a large number of my paintings, and probably a small display of the dolls photos too. Prints will also be available. Entry is free and you are welcome to just pop in and browse.
For more info, visit my Exhibitions Page.
(The exhibition picture is a new painting called Five Aces).

May 6th

There's several new changes to tell you about. First off I have a new painting: 'The Sphinx changes the Rules'. Another tale out of Ancient Greece - here is the Sphinx, somewhat more resourceful than the monster in the original story... To see the painting, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

Also, I'd like to announce the opening of the 'Commissions' gallery - setting out from the first to become something of a rogues gallery it would appear. Every now and then someone wants to actually be in one of my paintings - usually they seem to like to be devils for some reason, but I'm open to other suggestions. For anyone interested in commissioning a painting of themselves I have put a few notes on the commissions page, but do email me if you'd like to know more.

One last thing - finally you can now buy prints straight from my website as I've added paypal buttons for all of the prints - click the link to the left of each painting's page in my gallery, so see the list of prints I have for each one - but I will still be very happy to hear from anyone by email if you want to order prints 'in person' so to speak.

March 21st

New picture: 'Painted Devils'. The unholy trinity of she-devils returns - this time they are having their hooves painted in fetching shades to match their outfits - no self-respecting she-devil would be seen dead with scruffy hooves, and though sadly there are many devils without a shred of self-respect these girlies are not amongst them... To see the painting, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

February 21st

I have an exhibition coming up: 'Understating the Obvious' - Solo Exhibition at 'Frameus' in Wells, Somerset, UK. March 1st - 29th 2008 - for details have a look at my future exhibitions page

February 16th

New gallery: A few more changes to the website have been happening - all the menus pages in the gallery have had an overhaul, and I've added a few new categories as you can see from the top gallery page. Some stuff has moved around, so paintings that you thought were in a particular section of the gallery may not be there anymore - sorry! but don't despair because I've also re-done the 'everything' page in the gallery, and now it really does include everything, all alphabetically listed, so if it's on the website, it will be there. I hope. Anything that doesn't work, feel free to tell me so...
New/old pictures: A few images are new to the website, though not new to me: 'Extreme Clothing' was a little group of three drawings I did a while back, and all the 'Permanent Sketches' are up on the site, too (see the thumbnails)...

January 27th

New painting: 'Medusa in Venus' Bedroom. Another one! It's becoming a good year for Medusa, but don't worry, if you don't like Medusa I will be getting round to some other subjects in due course... This one was to some extent inspired by the 'Rokeby Venus' by Diego Velázquez - which hangs in the National Gallery. Of course there's rather less danger in seeing Venus face to face - in my version it's Medusa who's seen in the mirror, which makes a lot more sense to my mind... To see the painting, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

January 17th

New painting: 'Medusa in England'. First painting of 2008 - and a rather seasonal one. This is Medusa, yes, again! But not at home this time...
It's a small painting, and later than I usually get started in January, due to a huge amount of (largely invisible) website work - on the other hand some of this is starting to filter through to the actual site, finally! There is a brand new set of originals pages which list all the originals I have available for sale - including the 'Permanent Sketches'(see second picture to left) - which were too small and numerous to list before. To see all of the Permanent Sketches' I have for sale, have a look at the page with originals up to £50.
And finally, another 'Maidmers' painting has made it to the site. 'Sirens on the Rocks'(third one down on the left) was finished early last year, but there were just too many Maidmers all at once, and somehow this painting never quite made it to the site before...
To see the paintings, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

January 6th

Happy New Year!
a belated greetings for 2008. I'm currently spending many many hours building a super-efficient version of this site, which will be easier to update (or possibly just as time-consuming, but for more interesting reasons). In the end I hope to be able to list a lot more small drawings and things for sale without them being too difficult to keep track of, I may even manage buy-it-now buttons for prints (though feel free to still email me as before if you like). For the meantime it's rather preventing me from painting new pictures so I thought I'd just mention (now we're out of the Christmas card season) that I've got a little range of greetings cards of the 'Fetishdollies' photographs up on ebay at the moment - these are unlike my usual stuff - but I know a lot of people have seen them on the 'other' website www.fetishdollies.co.uk - anyway, you can see all the greetings cards on ebay here - or just click the thumbnails. Well that's all for now, back when I have something new to show you!

December 24th

Merry Christmas to all!
And thank you fof visiting... you can see all the past christmas images in the Christmas Archive.

November 19th - Exhibitions

It's turning into a busy month - I have a solo exhibition on this week, plus work in 2 other group exhibitions:
Solo exhibition in Nottingham -
20th - 26th Nov
William Blake exhibition in Glastonbury -
22nd Nov - 2nd Dec
RWA Open exhibition, Bristol -
21st Oct - 12th Dec
For details have a look at my Exhibitions page.

November 13th

New painting: 'The Infernal Gallop'. This painting was done for Bridgwater Arts Centre's Christmas Exhibition. The theme is 'Razzle Dazzle' - to which a painting of a line of Demons doing the Can-Can seemed to be highly appropriate. Have a look at my Exhibitions page for the details of this exhibition. To see the painting, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

October 27th

Christmas Cards and Newsletters: Yes, I know it's only October - but I've already been asked a few times about the cards so I thought it was about time I did something about it... So I have a shiny new page for Christmas Cards in the shop section of my website, where I'm offering cards of almost all the previous years Christmas pictures - but please note that I have very small numbers of the years before 2002 so if you want any it's best to ask about those early on. 2002 to 2006 I have in larger numbers. Incidentally I've also added a few cards to the usual range in the general greetings cards page.

The Newsletter Thingy: I've just sent out another of my occasional newsletter thingies - you can see it by clicking on mailing list (see the links to the left), and then selecting the most recent one, but if you would like me to email it to you then let me know your address and I'll add you to the list - I don't pass the address on to anyone else.

October 12th

Pictures at the RWA
- yay! I submitted pictures to the RWA (Royal West of England Academy) open exhibition, and I've had two accepted - the ones shown here - 'Predatory Birds' and 'Seven Sins at the Seaside' (click the thumbnails if you want to see them. The RWA is in Bristol, and you can see the exhibition from 21st October to 12th December. There's a map on the RWA's website.

September 4th

New artwork: 'The marriage of Heaven and Hell'. This drawing was done for an exhibition to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of artist, visionary and poet William Blake, which is being put together by Gallery Eight in Glastonbury 22nd November - 2nd December 2007. Unfortunately it is rather hard to show this one on a little monitor screen as it's a big drawing (by my standards), but if you can make it to the exhibition you can see if for real... As usual, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

And one other thing: free postage for prints (of anything to anywhere!). I've taken the charge off prints bought straight from this site, though you can still check out my ebay shop for the occasional bargain in the auction listings, this brings the prices for this site down towards my 'shop' listings in ebay.

August 18th

Mrs Minotaur 2 - photo sequence
I took a sequence of photos of this painting of Mrs Minotaur, and I've just got round to putting them up. pretty efficient for me actually - most of the photos I take of paintings half way through never see the light of day. The problem is even once I've taken the photos it's still quite hard to explain what I actually did (and why... and how...) but I've done my best, so follow the links if you're interested to see another painting in the making. You can go directly to the Mrs Minotaur step-by-step photos, and this page is also to be found by going to info, and then painting materials.
There are two more sequences of photos to be found on that page too - The Tattooed Fairy, and Dinner for Two.

August 18th

More Gold Fairies
... and (I hope) a more user-friendly page:
I've been adding to the series of 'gold fairies' quietly, and I'm afraid they haven't always made it on to the website - partly because that page was getting a little weighed-down with the extra images... so I'm trying a slightly different kind if display, and as these are the originals I get most enquiries about I've arranged the fairies into groups of sold and unsold. Anyway, if you visit the shiny new gold fairies page you will be able to browse through all the drawings (which I hope will open in a neat little inset image for you, so you don't spend the time going backwards and forwards).
Please note: some fairies may in fact be demons. There is nothing I can do about this.

August 1st

New painting: The Gorgon's new Man: 'Medusa and Oedipus'
Sophocles would be turning in his grave, but really - they're a perfect match - I mean, Medusa is actually pretty desperate and so likely to be happy with anyone, and Oedipus is hardly known for his ability to pick women (and it has to be said that even dating a Gorgon is probably less embarrassing than finding out you've accidentally been shagging your own mother...). As usual, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

July 8th

New painting: 'Medusa in Modesty'
It was high time I painted Medusa again as she's such a superb subject. I thought I would address the delicate issue of Medusa's pubic hair - or pubic snakes, as it were. No one else seems to have considered this quite obvious question. If course this would lead one to wonder if the poor girl also has underarm snakes, too. One can only assume this to be the lamentable truth of the matter, however, I assume she shaves them off. Underarm snakes really would be a trifle unpleasant, not to mention the trouble they could cause trying to put on a bra in the morning. As usual, click the thumbnail or visit my new work page.

To see all the new artwork...

...visit the New Work page (menu bar top left).

A little bit about my paintings

My art is largely concerned with the re-working of themes of fairytale and fantasy, mixed with many modern-day references, often trying to give a little dark disturbing twist to my interpretations. The result is something that hovers somewhere between fantasy and satire, and is not quite either.

My characters resonate with modern-day decadences - the fairies are delinquent; the devils bored, half-heartedly persecuting the damned merely because it is their job to do so; the Guardian Angel is fat and indolent, her rose-tinted spectacles shielding any wrong-doing from her 'watchful' eyes. I intend, however, not to depress you, rather to amuse, sometimes disturb, and just occasionally I may hope to make you think.

Have a look at the info section to read a little more about how my paintings are created.