Coming Home

This is the view that many St Albans residents see when they return from a trip away. It was sketched from just off the Redbourn road. This is now available as a signed, numbered limited edition print printed on 310g vellum surface fine art paper.
The print run of this picture is limited to 20.
The dimensions of the print is 16 inches by 12 inches (which is a
standard frame size) so you could put it straight into a frame or if you
prefer to have the print mounted there is sufficient blank paper round the
edge to do this.
£25 plus post and packing.

After the exhibition

The exhibition couldn't have been more successful. It's been lovely having everyone round to visit and to have such a great response to all the paintings. We have been very busy the last two weeks getting prints and everything ready for delivery and collection. So if you‘ve bought a print you’ll be pleased to know that after the purchase of a super-duper eight colour printer, colour trials on gorgeous 310g fine art paper, the ordered prints are almost all complete and packaged, so we'll be able to let you have them next week and then I'm off to University on Sunday. Thank you to everyone who came and made the weekend such a success.

Just before the exhibition

Here is virtual tour of the exhibition for those of you who couldn't make it!

In the paper!

We're thrilled that The London Evening Standard took an interest in the exhibition and this is the article all about the new Sandridge Forest that includes it. It's not long now and we are extremely busy preparing! Click on the image below to read the text

Just posing

In front of the newly painted walls, as we decide how to hang the pictures. So much to do!

Exhibition in Sandridge and why size matters

Well the walls are pretty much painted (last week I was up late at night and up at seven helping Mum) and a lot of the pictures are framed so we thought we should reveal the poster/invitation so that you can all put the dates in your diary. This is what’s so nice about having a graphic designer in the family – all those pesky things like publicity material get sorted out beautifully for you.

If you want to download a nice higher resolution pdf version of this to print off which has a description of the project on the other side you can download it here.

We have begun to realise that when selling on-line size matters. Anything that can't fit into standard packaging is a real pain to market. Sorting out non-standard packaging is difficult, time-consuming and expensive. And then with the new way that the British post office charge — where you now get penalised for dimensions as well as weight, it really isn't worth attempting to sell anything over the internet that is too fragile, heavy or big.

So our next task is to encourage Mum to stick to working to a postable size in the future.

If you are interested in buying any of the artwork but can't get here send us an e-mail giving us a link to the picture you're interested in and we'll let you know how much we're going to charge and more importantly whether it would be suitable to be posted.

I'm back!

I’m finally home from the Tall Ships' Race - it was honestly the most amazing experience of my life - and I have returned to find out that one of Mum’s paintings was commended at the St Albans Art Society Summer Exhibition. So far I haven’t had the chance to see the show but I am told that a special mention should go to Eva Tomkins, (particularly as she has an online presence we can link to for you) who exhibited three huge and amazing watercolours of the interior of St Albans Abbey.

The other good news was that my new bright red clunky plastic ‘art dealer’ glasses had arrived so expect some pictures of me with yet another new look on mum’s Family Portrait blog, and the house is filled with the chemical smell of paint as the parents have spent the summer making preparations for the "gallery" to be hung with pictures.

Been a bit quiet recently

Those of you who prefer Mum’s landscapes may have wondered why we chose to start our venture by exhibiting only her nudes at the upcoming St Albans Art Society Summer Exhibition. There is a reason for this. The entire ‘One Mile from Home’ output is so perfect for one exhibition that we thought that we would keep the whole years’ work for one art show in the village, before making them available for sale elsewhere. So, with the village hall being unavailable due to the endless round of judo, carpet bowls, silver threads, parish council meetings, ballet classes and other activities, where better (and cheaper) a venue than the place it started from – our own home. Well as you can imagine, a house with six of us living here (including one five year old) is going to need a fair bit of work on it to make it a suitable exhibition space. And then there’s all the work sorting out framing, mounting and cataloguing all the pictures. If any of you fans of Julie Oakley are likely to be in the St Albans area on September 13th, 14th or 15th this is when we’re planning to have the exhibition. I know she would love to meet some of her blogger friends in person. So mark the date in you calender and we’ll keep you updated.

Limited edition prints for sale

8" x 8" signed limited edition giclée print printed with Epson lightfast inks onEpson watercolour paper, mounted behind cream conservation quality board. Mounted size 12" x 12". Price £20 plus postage.

As promised, we are offering something postable to any of you who’d like one of my Mum’s nudes but can’t get to the St Albans Art Society Summer Exhibition. We’ve named this picture ‘Blue Nude’. The edition is limited to 10 (one of which is reserved for the show) and each print is individually numbered and signed. We’ve included a thumbnail picture of how it would look mounted though the colour of the mount looks slightly different on this computer when uploaded – just trust us, the mount is a colour that is a nice neutral cream colour and the size is a standard frame size so it should be very easy to find a ready-made frame to pop your picture into. If you would like to buy one we now have a paypal account so just e-mail us at flo at oakleygallery dot com with your address and we’ll let you know the additional cost of postage.

Flo is back!

I just got back from holiday today so Tom has been busy making up titles for the water colours going into the exhibition, it's quite difficult to think of something with so little time. He considered Nude 1, Nude 2, Nude 3, etc! Above is a composite of all the pictures we chose and if you want to see them bigger then click here. If you come to the exhibition you can buy an original water colour from as little as £50. My favourite is ‘Standing nude’.

Our first exhibition

Our first venture has been to pick out some of our favourite naked lady watercolours that Mum has done at her life drawing sessions and enter them for the local annual St Albans Art Society exhibition. We’ve framed three of them (the maximum number of framed entries per person) and mounted several others. They are all too big to post so if you are interested in buying any of them you’ll need to come to the exhibition, which is being held at the Lower Hall, Dagnall Street Baptist Church, St Albans from Friday 1st August to Saturday 9th of August from 9:30 to 4:30 except Sunday 3rd August when the venue is open from 1:00 to 4:30. There will be lots of affordable artwork by the many talented members of the society.

The original of one of our absolute favourites is already owned by someone else and is relatively small, so we’re looking into the cost of producing a limited edition run, together with packaging and posting costs, so that we can offer that picture to any of you who would like one of Mum’s lovely ladies, but can’t get to St Albans.

We’ll keep you posted.

The start of the Oakley Gallery

My mum has been constantly sketch-blogging for the last three years and, while the family do appreciate this is something she likes doing, we think it's time to start finding new homes for all the millions of drawings and paintings and sketches that are currently crushed behind the sofa. And while the paper recycling bin was emptied just this morning and is now looking mournfully empty, we think that some of these sketches - maybe not all of them - have got a bit of life left in them. And a bit of extra cash to help us through university wouldn't go amiss either.

So this is why Flo and I have set up the Oakley Gallery. Works posted here will all be for sale at affordable prices. To start with all the works on sale will be by Julie Oakley, but as the business develops we might be taking on more artists, from the St Albans area and beyond.