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Newsletter 2nd May ’09

Hello!
It's been another long time since I did a proper 'newsletter'. As I now have exhibitions coming up it's really time I got round to emailing a bit more frequently over the next few months. For the moment, here goes with a bit of catching up... again, I have left it too long! I'm sorry it's a long one - if there are too many words you could always just look at the pictures!

The Facebook page

I've been keeping up the Facebook page pretty well over the last couple of months, or however long it's been. It's a public profile, so even if you don't have a Facebook account you can still see it. Amongst the postings there were some step-by-step photos of one of my latest paintings emerging - there's a link further down this newsletter under 'Medusa's Hammock'. Other posts included some of my life-drawing sketches, which have finally (yesterday) made it on to my 'proper' website - read on for more of that, too.

Exhibitions

There are a couple of exhibitions coming up, including a possible one in London, but since not everything is planned and confirmed as yet I will mention only the confirmed things:

Sirens in Stockings... in Glastonbury

"In a meeting of the Divine and the Demonic, seductive she-devils and decadent deities slink through paintings inspired by classical tales and classic glamour."

I have a joint exhibition booked with Nottingham artist Charlotte Thomson which will run from the 14th - 26th July 2009, in Galleryeight, 8 Market Place, Glastonbury, BA6 9HW. There will be a Private View on the Sunday beforehand, and I'll send out an invite to anyone on the emailing list nearer the time. If the title sounds familiar, it's the same one we used for the exhibition in Nottingham a couple of years back, but this time with a whole raft of new Sirens... or possibly an 'lure' of sirens?

Banner - Sirens in Stockings - joint exhibition of artwork by Nancy Farmer and Charlotte Thomson

Full details of opening times etc. are on my exhibitions page. As you can probably tell, my painting is the one on the right, 'Death by Chocolate', from a series called 'The Department of Dangerous and Unusual Canapés. These haven't actually appeared on my site yet, as I'm kind of keeping them until nearer the exhibition. However, they already escaped onto my Facebook page, so if you want a preview have a look at this photo album, where you will also find the explanation for this rather curious title.

Xpo 2009 / London Fetish Weekend

I've just this week booked gallery space at the Xpo for this year - Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th October Hall 2, The Barbican, London EC1. This is an annual event, part of London Fetish Weekend, and the Xpo is a kind of all-fetish marketplace / fair, with art gallery, cafe etc. A lot of rubber is involved. Needless to say some of my artwork goes down rather well there, especially the dolls photos from www.fetishdollies.co.uk.

For those who remember it, this used to be the Skin Two Expo, now just the Xpo, same organizers, but without Skin Two. It's been several years since I've done this show, and I'd always rather missed not going so I thought I'd give it a go again. It's partly worth it for the entertainment and general freakshow (in the nicest sense), but also the whole thing is on one floor this time, so hoping the art gallery bit will get some reasonable traffic, too. Plus I get to run around in a corset and stockings and a very small skirt :-)

Anyway - definitely worth a visit if you're in London: www.thexpo.co.uk

New Website: www.FornicatingFairies.co.uk

Introducing Fornicating Fairies - the website! For those who've not read the previous notes I've posted here and there about this, I have a little group of artwork that is a bit more risqué than the rest of my stuff. So, partly in an effort not to alarm those who think I only do 'nice' fairies, and partly because it's a very fine name for a website, I have created www.fornicatingfairies.co.uk. Do take a peek, though depending on where one works these could generally be described as 'not safe for work!'. The website more or less does what it says on the tin...

FornicatingFairies.co.uk - artwork by Nancy Farmer

One final note on these pictures - yes I'm doing calendars next year - I've already been asked about them! Discrete little postcard calendars like I made last year... but this time with Fornicating Fairies on them, though I will also have 'normal' ones and dolls ones, too.

New Artwork

There has actually been quite a lot of new artwork since I last did a newsletter. Most of it's been popping up on the website from time to time, so you may already have seen it. Amongst my new pictures are of course all the images on the Fornicating Fairies website, though some of them were done as long ago as October of last year. I think you will have to visit that site on your own, and instead I'll show you my very newest painting:

Medusa's Hammock

Oh yes, another Medusa picture!

Medusa's Hammock by Nancy Farmer

Click here to see this picture on the website (including a close-up bit).

Medusa's garden naturally tends to be rather full of somewhat horror-struck stone 'Statues', and they clutter the place up and make it look untidy. Occasionally, however, she finds a use for one or two of them. Here is Medusa herself, relaxing in her hammock, with its unusual supports.

There are koi carp in the pond, a kind of fish that harbours few opinions on beauty or deformity, and who consequently have no problem whatsoever with Medusa's unusual appearance. This is good, because stone fish would sink to the bottom of the pond and be boring.

I also posted work in progress photos in a facebook album if you would like to see this painting develop - click here to see the album The photo below is one of those I took.

Medusa's Hammock by Nancy Farmer

Illustrations for Murky Depths

Murky Depths Illustration: 'The Longest Road in the Universe'

Click here to see bigger images on the website.

This pair of drawings were done to illustrate the short story 'The longest road in the Universe' by C.S. MacCath. I particularly loved this story; it's compelling, touching and very strange and creepy all at once. And the second image 'The Ash Room' is a really rather dark gothic / sci-fi kind of image that is one of the reasons I like to do these illustrations. To read the story, though you'll have to buy issue number 7 of Murky Depths

Coincidentally, Murky Depths issue 8 has just dropped through the door today, so I'll be posting another image on my site just as soon as I get round to it - it will be in the shiny new Illustrations section of the gallery.

Cocktails with the Nouveaux Morts

'Cocktails with the Nouveaux Morts' - vampires by Nancy Farmer

Click here to see this on the website (along with some bigger images)

Back around Christmas I had a bit of trouble with Vampires. Not the sort of trouble where one has to be careful who one invites over the threshold - the problem I have is that I always think they ought to make a good subject for a painting, and yet somehow they generally evade me. They are slippery so-and-sos. I think it comes down to the fact that vampires aren't actually for anything. Devils, now, they're useful - they serve a necessary purpose. All vampires ever do is pose about, or do that mad bared-fangs staring-eyeball thing that makes them look so much like Christopher Lee.

Anyway, after some mental meanderings I did in fact come up with a vampire picture - and an entirely new kind of Vampire - the Nouveau Morte.

This is a picture about Vampires, old and new. Let me be clear: there are no mortal people in this picture, only Vampires. The Nouveaux Morts are ‘making friends’. Trying their best to impress their guests, they are serving blood in sophisticated little cocktail glasses decorated with eyeballs on sticks, in much the same way as one might ruin a fine vintage port by dousing it with bitter lemon. There are probably ice cubes and, Hell forbid, there probably really is bitter lemon in there somewhere too. Some of the guests are doing their utmost to be tolerant in the hope that the effort will be to their ultimate advantage; nonetheless these ancient and evil Creatures of the Night are finding it hard to come to terms with such depraved behaviour as this.

I could go on. In fact I did go on - if you take a look at this picture on my website you'll find that I went on at great length on the subject, in words. But to no further avail. That seems to be it for vampire pictures for the foreseeable future.

The Small Stuff Gallery

This is a new bit of my gallery that I made some time ago, so if you've already read all this on my site I apologize for repeating myself here.... If you haven't: I had a few series of things that were all original pieces, but, well... small. And not necessarily simply paintings and drawings - they include coasters and badges, too, but all containing an element of original artwork. I've gathered them up into the Small Stuff gallery in an attempt to keep the front page of the gallery down to a manageable number of categories. In there you'll now find the Permanent Sketches, which have been on my site for years, along with a couple of new(ish) additions:

Demons in a Coaster

The first lot of these that appeared on my site are actually for sale on the 303 gallery. I've now added a few more, available straight from me, but you might have to be quick, as there aren't very many of them at present. More on the way when I have time. Go to Demons in a Coaster where you can see all of them, and below is the story of how they came about.

The gold leaf I use for the Gold Fairies (and the now-unveiled and rather naughtier Fornicating Fairies), comes in the form of gold transfer leaf - the leaf is loosely stuck to a little 4 inch square of waxed paper. This means that I've been building up quite a pile of these little bits of paper, all with shreds and bits of precious metal leaf stuck to them - not enough to sensibly use for the next fairy, nor nearly enough to make it worth taking them to a gold-refiner as I'd probably need a decent sack-full... So instead I have come up with a much more attractive use for them - I have been making coasters.

On the back of each one is a little paragraph that explains everything:

"This coaster contains the remains of 2 sheets of real gold or platinum leaf; the leftover pieces from my Gold Fairy series. It also contains a number of demons. Through a process of equal and opposite reactions, thereby keeping the universe in equilibrium, demons are necessarily created as a by-product of fairy creation. However, in an attempt not to add to the chaos of out times, the demons thus created have been trapped and encased in timeless acrylic, where they can be viewed without danger. As a bonus, they will also protect your furniture from hot mugs of coffee. This coaster is wipe-clean, however, do not immerse in water. Certain demons are water-soluble and will probably get out."

Incidentally these drawings are actually some of the trickiest to do - the drawings are done straight onto the waxed paper backing that the gold leaf is attached to - a surface that (so far as I have found) nothing will write on, apart from Indian Ink and a dip pen, and that only because the dip pen also slightly scratches the wax surface as it goes along. The trickiness of the surface adds to the randomness of the drawing style, but demons are pretty random things, so that's all right then.

Buttons (or badges)

The other things in the Small Stuff gallery are a little series of Buttons. Actually they're what I would call badges - the little round things with the pins on the backs - but I've been listing things on the American Etsy.com now that I find it hard not to call them 'buttons' now, like they all do. Anyway, this was rather a case of 'have badge-making-device, will make badges', and so I did. All with little drawings in them. A few are displayed under the title of Original Buttons on my site, and I've been listing them on the aforementioned Etsy.com in the Original Buttons section of my Etsy shop. Unfortunately interest has been limited over these little fellows, and so I've not listed them all. If anyone is interested in any of these send me an email and I can either continue to list the lot of them or post an image of the rest of them - I believe I have around 35 or 40 of them.

here are just a few:

Wearable art by Nancy Farmer

Life Drawing Sketches

Just yesterday I added yet another section to my site. For some time now I've been doing a lot more life drawing, which is immensely useful, especially for one who generally sits at home and makes things up rather than going out and actually looking a them. So it seemed about time I put some of these life drawings on my website. Actually there are rather a lot of them on the site suddenly, but you don't actually have to look at all of them...

They're all here in the Life Drawing gallery. I have even put prices on them. Whether people are actually interested in buying them remains to be seen, of course - at least they are getting an airing. They are almost all sketches in biro, which I'm lamentably attached to when it comes to this kind of thing. I'm afraid I have never yet got to grips with that traditional medium for doing life drawing, the stick of charcoal; being firmly wedded to the belief that a burnt twig is not a proper drawing tool. I really do like other people's drawings in burnt twig, though, so one day I may actually break out and give it another go, though I would need to get some bigger paper... For the moment, what you will see if you take a look, is a lot of biro, and a bit of coloured pencil.

Auction sites and the like...

Some people may have noticed I listed a lot of things on Ebay over the last fortnight. This is an experiment. I'm having one more go at seeing if it's economically viable under Ebay's new shop arrangement, which currently encourages one to list items at a fixed price rather than in an auction format. All the prints there work out at pretty much the same price as I charge for them myself, so there would be no point rushing over there just now, but I may run some items on special reductions to see what happens. If you want to keep an eye out for these then the go to http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Art-by-Nancy-Farmer/ and put yourself on the list to get the shop newsletter. The current score is something like me:£0 Ebay:£35 so this may be a short-lived experiment, but I'll give it a few weeks...

I'm still listing on Etsy, the site for handmade things. In fact I now have two shops there - the original one which has prints of my painted stuff, and a second one which I'm moving the Dolls cards into, which also has prints of the Fornicating Fairies:
My Original Etsy Shop
Etsy shop for the FornicatingFairies and FetishDollies cards

Well, that's it for the moment - once again I'm sorry for the monster newsletter - still trying to make them shorter and a bit more frequent. Anything else you want to know, please email me...
take care
Nancy
x

Nancy Farmer
Visit my Gallery of Paintings at www.nancyfarmer.net
Visit the Dolls website at www.fetishdollies.co.uk
Visit the FOrnicating Fairies at www.FornicatingFairies.co.uk

All images © Nancy Farmer (unless otherwise stated), all rights reserved. Please email me if you wish to reproduce any of the images on this site

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