New Exhibition at Twenty Twenty

Spotlight : Who is Lucky?

Who is Lucky?
  Plenty of us are talented, clever, and we make some amazing things. Sometimes we get lucky, and people notice our stuff, and we do well out of it, and reach a big audience.

'The Other Art Fair', London, Brick Lane

Success needs luck, we think, as well as talent and hard work and brains, and often charm too.
  Imagine your own lucky thing happening, where someone in a gallery or a book company notices what you do, and gives you a chance, and then a magazine does an article on you, and you end up really popular and selling loads of paintings or book illustrations.
  All because of that lucky moment when someone noticed that what you do is worth being given an opportunity.

Helen A Pritchard wins £10k Evening Standard Contemporary Art Prize

Haha! That is one way of looking at the notion of luck and success. It is the typical way.

  We so often think the story is about us. We feel from our own perspective. 
  The story above might instead be about the gallery owner, whose gallery becomes successful.  It may be about how they were lucky enough to see your work and give you a chance, and then have an article written about it all in a big magazine. Since that lucky day their gallery is doing great.

Hahahaa... Perspectives…. We always think it is about people, and how they feel.
  Supposing we are not the important thing.
    Supposing what matters is the Idea.

There are thousand of ideas, millions, all whizzing about, and hardly any of them get realised. Those ideas are all zipping about, worrying and wondering whether they will ever get noticed.

'Kora', 2018, by Riley Aubrienne Polek-Davis

One day, one of the people who carries a version of one particular idea (about how to paint light on roses, using bold coloured curves based on a way they painted some hair on a life figure), talks to another person, who has an idea about a show. The idea about doing a show about bold bright curves was in someone else's head. Now those two ideas have met.
  And then another idea meets them both. This idea is bouncing around in the head of a magazine writer. It is an idea about how ideas themselves can travel, through music, or through paintings, to join more ideas (which are in lots of other heads - the audience). To us this is an idea for a magazine article about how people understand painted light in a gallery context – but to the other ideas, it is not an abstract concept. It is as real as paintings, and galleries, and people and skin, and just as alive.
  Later, the magazine idea looks back to how lucky it was to have met that nice idea about a gallery show. And the gallery idea thinks “You know, I’m lucky to have met that idea about how to paint roses. Between us we made the roses accessible to a whole lot of thoughts who came along and met the roses idea.” They met the roses idea through that image of roses in light, which was painted by another one of those fleshy-bony things that ideas often have - called 'humans'. And the ideas could each think "You know, maybe I was even lucky to have landed in that particular human's brain in the first place."
  Maybe what is important is the ideas, not who has them, or who gets known for them.
     Maybe we don't have ideas. Ideas have us.

'Family reading', by Alex Grey

I think it's both ways.

  We are all Lucky.

Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1917. 

Torn-and-pasted paper and coloured paper on coloured paper, 

19 1/8 x 13 5/8" (48.5 x 34.6 cm)

by Jean (Hans) Arp

We've grown to 100 members!

Ludlow Art Society is delighted that membership has now reached 100. This is a significant increase which strengthens the society as we build a sustainable future. We will continue to press towards a wider variety of artistic styles and formats, and be totally inclusive of all who want to regard themselves as artists. We still have much work to do on attracting the younger generation. Nonetheless, we have reached a milestone which we should all be proud to celebrate! Cheers to Ludlow Art Society!

Summer Exhibition 2018 Results

This was by far our most successful exhibition for a long time. Clearly the talent of our artists, including many newly joined members, is appreciated by the art loving public. At least one artist was picked up by a regional gallery! Prizes were awarded as follows, and the results of the visitors' favourite exhibit poll are beneath.

President's Prize:

Light on our Industrial Heritage - Catherine Downes

Twenty Twenty Gallery Prize:

Fisherman's Walk - Sandra Graham 

Mayor's Choice:

Reclining Nude - Alastair Huddart

Castle Bookshop Prize:

Windmill Hill, Much Wenlock - Carl Niblett

Ludlow Brewery Prize:

Street Scene - Lily Wang

The 15 most popular exhibits are as follows. Please bear in mind that some works were removed early and their counts might otherwise have been higher. Thanks hugely to Alice and Peter Burden for counting the voting slips.

1	Carl	Niblett	Camusdarach Beach, Scotland	66
2	Sandra	Graham	The Water Into Ripples Breaks	41
3	Lily	Wang	Generations Apart	39
4	Rob	Leckey	End of Platform 4, Shrewsbury Station	33
5	Val	Littlehales	Golden Days	18
6=	Margaret	Rowson	Trees in Winter	16
6=	Val	Littlehales	Shropshire Lane	16
8	Rob	Leckey	The Harbourmaster Aberaeron	15
9	Samuel	Bebb	Wigmore Castle 2	14
10	Alexandra	Adams	Clun in Autumn	13
11=	George	Loades	At the Waters Edge Whitby	12
11=	Sandra	Graham	Coastal Path Pwllgwaelod	12
13	Lily	Wang	Ludlow Castle	11
14	Sandra	Graham	Fisherman's Walk	11
15	Mary	Phillips	Shashi Resting	10

A complete analysis of votes can be found below (click to enlarge).