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.