Natalie Martin

Love me, Love my Pinterest.

Natalie — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:21:14 +0000

Wow, it’s nearly May already and I haven’t written a thing all year. Well, to tide you over I thought I’d put up a link to my Pinterest boards. People often ask where I get my inspiration from and I’m never too sure what to say. I feel that everything in my life influences my work and as the things I put on Pinterest are a pretty good reflection of things that I love, you’ll get the jist of where my brain is at. There is bad language, nudity, things you may find offensive and gratuitous Batman references…you have been warned.

http://pinterest.com/nataliemartinuk/

Enjoy and I’ll see you soon x

New Video Blog

Natalie — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:02:56 +0000

Just to let you know that I’ll be trying to add to my new YouTube channel as the year and work progresses. This is just an overview of my work with some info. Enjoy x

Natalie Martin-The Artists Solution-Portfolio

Eastbourne’s coming up lovely

Natalie — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:20:02 +0000

It’s a bit of a double edged sword when the days get longer and the weather starts to warm up and be lovely. I so miss the light during the winter months but once it’s here I’m either outside basking and feeling guilty about not being in the studio or I’m in the studio staring sadly out of the window like a veal. Luckily this month I’ve had a couple of good excuses to get out and about with work-related chores to sooth my conscience.

The Saffron Gallery are having a Made in Brighton exhibition which they have very kindly asked me to be part of. Battle is just lovely if you fancy a day out in a country town and the gallery is really nice with some really good artists. It’s not a huge place but they’ve managed to accommodate a lot of art without making the place feel cluttered or over hung. I heartily recommend it.

April also means the Blue Monkey Studio Open event, Materialize, for the Eastbourne Festival. If you haven’t come before, where the hell have you been? This year they have some fab artists (my favourite Sam Lock among them) and being that I was on such a roll last month, I kinda went crazy again and have done them another giant painting! Transportation wasn’t so traumatic this time and I think it looks fab on the stairs up to the studio. It will look even more fab if someone else has to go through the trouble of taking it home though x

Next year I’m only painting minitures!

Natalie — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:17:49 +0000

March has been a bit of a mad month. I’ve been out and about visiting family here, there and everywhere (well, Cheltenham, Bristol and York) and finding some great painting ideas along the way. But the main excitement has been the big painting! It’s big. Very big. And the best part is that I love painting big! It’s surprisingly similar to painting small but getting to stand up and paint and do the whole splashing around in a dramatic painterly fashion is very enjoyable. The worst part though is that the painting is big…and I don’t drive or have a van so the usual transportation issue became more of a crisis. And not being one to thing things through, getting the 4′ x 6′ canvas to London for the Royal Academy submission day was touch and go right up to the last minute. Thankfully Sue Barnes, organiser of Art and Soul stepped in like the angel of long-wheel base vans and saved my bacon. Just going to have to wait and see whether it’s going to have to come straight home again after all that! x

The Royal Pavillion at Brighton

Natalie — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:15:19 +0000

It’s taken me ages but the new painting is finally finished! I’ll get some sensible pictures done as soon as possible and get it up on the website so you can have a proper look but I’m so pleased with it, I couldn’t wait to see it online. It’s funny how some paintings end up being so special. I’ve been wanting to paint the Pavillion for such a long time and eventually managed to get the aspect I wanted from the top deck of a bus. I’m hoping that everyone else will be as excited about it as me. It may end up being one of the ones I hang on to for a bit. I hate having to say goodbye before I’m ready.
Things are gearing up for submission season so I’m going to be pretty busy until at least June. I’ve decided to submit to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition again this year. I’ve heard so many stories of people that were hung on their first application and then never again, that it’s starting to give me the heebie-jeebies. So I’m taking the bull by the horns and painting something enormous. Why? I’ve no idea but I thought I’d go huge and if it doesn’t get chosen at least I can put it down to them running out of space! I’m going to have to paint much faster though. Much, much faster x

Beautiful Bellis Gallery

Natalie — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:42:32 +0000

So today marks the end of the first month of the year. It’s been busy. My schedule is planned out for the first half of the year and despite clearing out quite a few extraneous events, I’ve still managed to over book myself and it’s going to be a tight squeeze to get everything done. As usual. But the days are getting longer which is going to make life and painting a little easier, I think. Can’t wait for it to warm up too.
Some lovely news is that Bellis Gallery in Brighton (which if you don’t know it, is just off East Street on Kings Road near the seafront, map here) have hung some of my work. Pictures are up on the Facebook page. They are also stocking prints and drawings and I will be doing some new work exclusively for them sometime next month. So if you’re passing, pop in and say hi. It’s a fabulous gallery with some of the best Brighton based artists, ceramics, jewellery, photography and they’re thoroughly nice folks too. As well as the shop downstairs, make sure you head up to the first floor, not only to see the larger works on show but to savour the building itself. The windows are amazing and the whole place screams “Paint me!” whenever I’m in there. It’ll have to wait it’s turn though. There’s a queue, y’know.

Sale? That was some New Year’s Party!

Natalie — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:53:23 +0000

Well, the New Year is upon us and I’m left wondering where 2010 went? It seemed to pass in a flash and I’m hoping that 2011 will be a little less eager to slip away. So far it’s been smothered in coughs, colds and some self-inflicted, over-indulgence related illness but thankfully I’ve been back in the saddle this week and the year’s starting pretty well!
As an addition to the pigeon drawings, I’ve been easing myself back into the swing of things with some seagulls, magpies and cockatiels. It seemed the sensible thing to do as they are drawn in the dark and we seem to be limited to about 20 minutes of daylight at the moment. Each finished drawing is made up of two or more birds (except for the magpies, of course) and is unique. If you’re interested, I’m hoping to deliver some to the Lansdown Studios and Gallery next week. I popped in on Monday and it’s looking fantastic. Colin and Sarah have worked really hard so if you didn’t make it before Christmas and you find yourself in Lewes, do go and say Hi.
Now that the lovely mailing list people have received their New Year cards (yes, you could have had one too if you were on the list! Email me if you want to get nice stuff too), I feel I can include you in the fabulous/insane idea that I had to give 25% of all paintings on the website until the end of January. There’s only two weeks to go so if you saw something last year that you loved but couldn’t afford, now’s the time!
I hope you’re all sticking to your New Years resolutions. Mine is, no more discounts for the rest of the year. Just kidding! It’s no more discounts, ever. Happy New Year everyone x

It’s not what you know…

Natalie — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:36:20 +0000

After a lovely invitation from Wycliffe Stutchbury back in August and a bit of kerfuffle in-between, one of my paintings is part of an online conceptual project by Liv Pennington this month. She started Nepartism in 2009 and her words best describe it. “The Exhibition starts with a single image that I have selected primarily because I really enjoy it and think more people should see it. Parallel to this is that I know the artist well enough to have their email address and/or phone number.
“The artist is then invited/expected to follow the same procedure, to select a piece of work from someone they know and want to promote, then that artist is then invited to follow the same procedure and so on until 10 pieces of work have been selected, someone doesn’t want to play or the deadline has been met.
“The show grows because of who we know; it is nepotism with a bit of altruism. I am interested in where this chain goes, does one artist get selected more than once. How small or large are the artist pools.
“How do our selections reflect on our own artist practice, are we interested in similarities or differences, do opposites attract? or is it safety in familiarity?”

Personally, I love to see who likes what, like chinese whispers of creative influence. And there’s some really nice work too x

www.nepartism.com

Something a bit different…

Natalie — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 07:23:50 +0000

I know, I know, I haven’t added to this blog for ages but it’s been a hard to get back in the saddle after the exhausting round of art fairs back in October. And then just when I felt like I was ready to get back to work, I got struck down by, what I’m hoping, was the first and last cold of the winter. So I’ve decided to stir myself from my sudo-hibernation and get down to some good stuff during the short but sweet winter days coming up.
In a slight departure from my usual architectural, obsessive, longitudinal forays into painting, I have been doing some pictures of pigeons. They started off as a bit of an experiment. Having a ton of tracing paper, a projector and a spare evening or two I was just messing around and found that by projecting the images onto the tracing paper and drawing over them I could get a fabulous result which could be layered to produce depth. And drawing in the dark means that you never actually know how it’s turned out until you put the lights back on, which is kind of exciting!
I made a couple and they sold right away, so I made some more and those went even quicker so I’m guessing people like them. So if you fancy a proper look (pigeon fancier?) I have some at the Lansdown Studios and Gallery in Lewes and at the Blue Monkey Xmas Open Studio in Eastbourne. They’ll be in the browser. Hope to see you there! x

Palace art fair starts today

Natalie — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:51:30 +0000

Setting up for Palace Art Fair today.

Hope the weather and parking attendants will be kind and that I’m not too worn out for the Private View tonight. It looks like it’s going to be sunny this weekend so I’m bracing myself for a busy few days…

…and, in an ideal world, selling out! x