Dear Member

Have you ever heard of Chromacolour acrylics? They are specialist paints developed for the painting of ‘cells’ in the animation industry. Our visiting artist in September, Andrew Forkner, likes to use these paints for his detailed wildlife portraits. Their special qualities include a very high pigment load, allowing their use as opaque acrylics as well as enabling the gradual build-up of layers of colour when very much diluted to watercolour-like consistency. Alongside his video presentation, Andrew brought many lovely examples of his work for us to see.

Another event in September was the Cookham Dean Fete. We are always pleased to support this charity event with a donation from the club, and members of our Tuesday Painters group put on their usual exhibition in the village hall. Several sales of framed and unframed paintings and cards were made. We would like to thank all those who took part.

Sunday Painting, in October, was at Boveney Church, a redundant church on the banks of the Thames.

What with people’s reluctance to go out, because of Covid, and the desperate lack of petrol at local garages it is not surprising that very few painters turned up! Interestingly, a couple on a day out from London bought a painting of the church which Lyn had just completed. A successful day!

Left: one of Lyn’s paintings. Right Helen’s watercolour of her loyal companion on the day.

In October Sonia Bacchus came to run a portraiture workshop.

She started with a demonstration, painting a portrait of her son with his cat. We all then went on to paint figures from photos which we had chosen to bring. Some comments following the workshop:

“I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop. Sonia was so helpful encouraging and informative. I came away feeling I had learnt a lot.”

 “I enjoyed the workshop very much with Sonia. I found her inspirational and a very generous person who was most encouraging and positive.  I liked her laid back approach to colour and she gave so many good tips and advice and managed to give her time and attention to each one of us. Really lovely lady, a talented artist.”

” Sonia is an inspiration, very positive about everyone’s paintings and so helpful. I, for one, find painting people really hard so having her advice was invaluable.”

 “What a fantastic workshop – I found it really inspiring too and feel like experimenting with mixed media straight away. “

Rather sadly for us, it seems Sonia will be returning to live in Poland at the end of the year so will only be available for zoom workshops after that. We wish you well, Sonia, and thank you for all the demos and workshops which you have done for the club.

There are still some places available on our Workshop in Cookham Dean Village Hall, Sunday 14th November, 10am to 4pm, Church Road, Cookham Dean, Berks SL6 9PD. Please apply soon if you would like to take part.

Chris Christoforou has visited us before giving fascinating insights at critiques (left) and a talk on how to sell your work. This time he will be running a workshop on the theme of Painting an Expressive Landscape in acrylics.

Limited to 16 places. £30 per person.

If you would like to join the workshop, please email Sue Sepehri by 30th October (smsforcac@gmail.com ) requesting how many places you will require. 

Sue will then email your confirmation and outline your payment options. No payment will be required until Sue has emailed you and confirmed your place.

(We do appreciate that there are a few members who do not use email. We hope that those members will get a friend to send Sue the initial email and she will take it from there. If you can’t do that, ask a member of the CAC committee at one of our meetings and they will contact Sue.)

Monthly Meeting in November.

A talk by Inge du Plessis will follow our Annual General Meeting on Thursday 18th November, 2pm – 4pm in The Parish Centre, Church Gate, Cookham, SL6 9SP. 

The AGM will start with opening remarks by the Chairman and reports by our Secretary and Treasurer. This will be followed by reports on our year’s activities and developments.

We have some important changes to announce and vote on: Re-election of some existing committee members, choosing a new Chairman and new committee members and saying farewell to retiring committee members. We are pleased to announce that the present committee have asked Kay Lamb, our retiring chairman, to take on the role of President of the club, following the sad loss of Bert Showell. Kay has agreed to this. The other retiring committee member, after many years of loyal service, is Janet Fois. 

We would welcome nominations for Chairman and a Committee Member. Please submit your nomination to the Chairman at least two weeks before the AGM. You must ask the nominee in advance if they agree to their name being put forward.

The meeting will be followed by a talk by Inge du Plessis on her journey through to the final of Sky Portrait Artist of the Year. Many of you will recognise Inge from her appearance on Sky, others will have seen her intriguing work at our summer exhibition, where she was also a member of our selection panel.

We look forward to an interesting AGM this year and hope that many of our members will be able to attend.

Tuesday Painting. With the lifting of covid restrictions we are back in the Cookham Dean Village Hall. As with the usual ‘Tuesday Painting’, anything goes – so feel free to work on or off topic. It is good to have a few paintings in the Newsletter so do send me pictures of your art if you have something you would like to share (rdjforcac@gmail.com ).

Yours sincerely

Robert Jones email rdjforcac@gmail.com

Newsletter Editor