MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Held on 21st November, 2024 at Holy Trinity Parish Centre
Meeting opened at: 14.00
Committee Present: Robert Jones – Chairman, Freddie Daniel – Treasurer, Sue Sepheri – Programme Organiser, Gill Griffith – Programme Organiser, Satu Vartiainen – Artistic Advisor, Lyn Rackley – Outdoor Painting, Pam Cullinane – Tuesday painting, Kay Lamb – President, Wendy Mercer – Exhibitions Organiser. (delayed).
The total attendance this year: 25 members –
1. Apologies
3 members kindly offered their apologies before our meeting
2. Reading of the AGM Minutes 2023
Read and accepted.
3. Chairman’s opening remarks
Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to our Annual General Meeting. It is good to see you all and I hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding somewhere to park, considering all the extra traffic involved with the work on the church.
This is a time to review another year in the life of Cookham Arts Club. You belong to a large and active art club with (as last year), 155 members – 22 members left in 2022 but we welcomed 22 new members this year.!. We have had some most enjoyable events including demonstrations, exhibitions and workshops. When I first joined, I thought a committee of 10 or 11 was quite a lot of people to run a club – but I was wrong. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work and dedication to organise all our events and I would like to say a huge thank you for the loyal support of all our committee and the many other members who help to keep things running smoothly.
Also thank you to all of you here today for joining our club, and for your loyal support for the events we put on. I hope you will find this an enjoyable meeting – not only our AGM but also what promises to be a fascinating talk later on.
I should now hand over to our club secretary, Simone to say a few words but she has been told to give her voice a complete rest, due to some possible vocal cord damage! This is obviously an opening for jokes about talking too much, but I will resist!
So, we will move on to the reports. We have had another very good year as far as sales are concerned. Also, it has been great to welcome quite a number of new faces at our Tuesday painting at CDVH. Outdoor painting has seen one or two extra attendees at times but we are still looking for a coordinator to view and recommend sites to visit. If anyone would like to take on this task, please let us know or chat to Lyn. Workshops are well attended but at monthly meetings our numbers have been down at times, which is a shame because we have some very interesting demos. Sue will give the report for monthly meetings and workshops. Pam will report on Tuesday painting. Lyn will fill you in on outdoor painting and finally Wendy will report on our exhibitions, website and our annual club holiday.
4. Secretary’s Report
As the Secretary was unable to attend, Robert moved onto reports.
4.1 Monthly Meetings and Workshops
We have had two critiques this year. Jan Gaska gave us an interesting afternoon, with helpful comments on colour, tone, light and atmosphere, and what was ‘working’ or ‘not working’ in our pictures.
Jo Harris a local artist from Henley also visited us. She was great fun and very entertaining. She had 34 paintings to critique with a variety of subject matter. Our members had really taken on the challenge of creating modern abstract paintings and the results were superb.
Our first and highly informative demo of the year was from Tushar Sabale. He talked entertainingly whilst creating a beautiful oil painting of the fountain at Trafalgar Square. Many of you will have seen his work at our Summer Exhibition and his demo showed his wonderfully gentle approach and his outstanding use of colour.
We also welcomed Paul Oakley who gave us a clear and interesting demo of a Big Sky landscape using oil paints. Paul specialism is landscapes and he painted a beautiful Norfolk Broads scene showing us what can be achieved using a limited colour palette. He was clear and concise and showed us tips with colour mixing and creating a variety of tones for a sky.
April saw the return of an old favourite of our Club Keith Hornblower, He has demonstrated for us many times before and we have always enjoyed his loose paintings and his way of explaining his progress through each painting. This time he painted a scene very familiar to us, the Kings Arms in Cookham High Street. He used a limited palette and only three brushes, He made a great emphasis on tonal value and how tonal value is more important than colour choice in making the painting work. The result was a loose and interesting painting of a local pub.
Becky Gouverneur was a new artist to our Club. She used coloured pencils to develop an animal picture. Each of her finely detailed works takes many hours to finish, so she brought along a partly completed picture of a peacock. She showed us some of the techniques she would use as well as demonstrating some separate elements of animal portraiture. It was a fascinating session showing work in a medium not often seen in our demos.
In June the artist Cathy Read gave us a demonstration of her quite unusual techniques of watercolour and acrylic ink painting. Her technique involves making detailed pencil drawings of her subjects – largely buildings and city scenes – and then outlining nearly all of her drawn lines with masking fluid. After ‘background’ watercolour washes she applied acrylic ink to main areas of colour, spraying with water to make the ink spread in interesting ways, and in some areas sprinkling salt to provide more interest. Unfortunately this was a slightly disorganised demo and she did not make a lot of progress with the main picture. She did show us some of the final removal of masking fluid from another picture, revealing the white outlining it produces, and she also brought many finished and quite unique pictures for us to see.
In September Stewart Beckett gave us an interesting and informative demonstration of a portrait painting in oils. One of the most helpful aspects of the demo was the way he had fixed his palette next to the painting so that we could very clearly see his interesting mix of colours.
We always try to include artists we have not had before for our programme of demos and in October Rodney Kingston a previous candidate of both Sky Arts Portrait and Landscape Artist of the Year competitions, joined us and painted a coastal scene in oils. He has only very recently started out as a full time professional painter and it was good to be able to help him on his journey. We all learnt a lot from his approach, he gave us plenty of tips and advice and he produced a delightful painting to inspire us.
We held our usual 4 Workshops this year. One of our most popular Workshops is our Club Workshop day and this year it was run by Gill Griffith . The cost to our members was minimal and the club supplied some gouache paints, indian inks and some good quality watercolour paper. We used the gouache paints with an ink resist technique, which meant painting over our gouache painting with totally black indian ink. When it was dry we then washed or scrubbed some of the ink off under a tap and finally touched up with watercolours and ink as much or as little of the paintings as we wanted to. The results were so interesting and everyone had a great deal of fun learning something new. Our thanks go to Gill for a super day.
In April sixteen members took part in our seascape workshop run by Susan Gray. Susan did a very thorough demonstration with acrylics using mainly two different types of palette knives, one wide and the other long and thin. The subject was difficult and included crashing waves hitting the shore but after some hesitations and false starts our members dived in and the results were superb.
Last month we had a very popular workshop which was well oversubscribed. It was with Tushar Sabale, who had provided a demo for us earlier in the year. Members worked from his photo reference or their own river scene photo in either oils or acrylics. We had a lot of feedback and everyone enjoyed the day and was appreciative of Tushar’s help with technique and other useful tips. We are conscious that sometimes the artists do not provide sufficient one to one tuition at the workshops. This is always difficult particularly when the artist is working on their own painting which is, for them, part of the demo and workshop process. Please continue letting us have feedback if you are able to, it is always helpful for us to know what our members feel can be improved.
Frank Walters has recently run a watercolour workshop for us. He is another artist who is well known to our club and always provides an entertaining and fun day. He was working with us on capturing structure and buildings in our watercolour paintings and provided many different photographic painting references for us to chose from. It was another successful and rewarding workshop for all who attended.
Our Workshops are proving very popular and we have very few which are not fully subscribed. So please get your request for a place in early. The workshops are detailed in our Newsletters with all the information regarding dates, times and locations and how to apply for a place.
For the future we are always looking for artists who are new to us to demonstrate or hold a workshop. We have had several suggestions during the year which we are pursuing but please do get in touch with either Gill or I if you have any thoughts as to who you may like to see in the future whether it be old faces or artists who may be new to us. Our events diary for 2025 is now in place but later next year we will start to think about artists for 2026 so do get in touch.
It is good to see so many members supporting our club through our workshops and demos and we very much hope this will continue in 2025. We would particularly like to see more members at our demos . We appreciate that the demos are now held in the afternoon and that may be difficult for some but we do promise an interesting and entertaining couple of hours if you are able to make it.
4.2 Tuesday Painting Report
Pam Cullinane gave us a short report on the 2024 Tuesday Painting meetings, summarizing some of the highlights.
4.3 Outdoor Painting Report
For the first time I can remember in a long time, none of our 6 outdoor painting events were interrupted by rain this year. Sadly numbers attending were still very low – only 3 or 4 except for Nashdom which attracted 8 painters. It was a little disappointing as in some cases, we were given access to some private locations where the owners went to some effort to welcome us.
At the last AGM I unfortunately had to give notice that after 8 years, I would have to consider handing over the task of finding locations to a new person, because of my worsening back problems & my need to care more for my husband. That is still the case but this year, 5 members came forward to help find, research & organise the locations with me – those lovely people were Carol Baughan, Ann King, Roy Baker, Rachel Ireland & Pam Hammond. Without their help & enthusiasm, the sessions may not have taken place.
Beginning in April, Carol suggested Guards Club Park in Maidenhead with views of the Sounding arch over the Thames & she offered the use of her house nearby throughout the day & treated us to tea afterwards.. For May, Ann King arranged for us to visit the house of a friend in Taplow. This was a magnificent Tudor barn conversion & the owners were very interested for us to come. In June, we took the opportunity to revisit the Buddhist Centre at Taplow Court gardens at a different time of year, on one of their open days. Plenty of facilities & cream teas available. In August, through Roy’s connections, we were invited back to Nashdom House, a grand mansion with extensive grounds, designed by Lutyens for a Russian Prince, & again we were treated to refreshments by some residents. For September, we met at Littlewick Green, with a range of attractive cottages & a lovely cricket pavilion, with Pam kindly inviting us back to her house afterwards. Finally in early October, we stayed close to home in case of bad weather, & sat near Cookham war memorial to paint the surrounding views. Families out for Sunday walks stopped to chat, including Timmy Mallett, local Cookham resident & painter himself. A group of horse riders came through, although no one was brave enough to include them in their scene. The landlords of the nearby Crown pub, were most keen to see our finished pictures so we retired there afterwards for an hour or 2 to review our work and enjoy the warmth.
Next year is still uncertain for me, so if anyone does feel able to take on the task of main co-ordinator for locations, it would be marvellous, but if no one does, Rachel & Ann are kindly planning to visit locations & together we plan to put together a programme for 2025. Painting en plein air is a great way to develop skills in composition & painting & it will be a shame if this activity does not continue & we hope it may become more popular following our event this year with Tushar Sabale, Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the year, a regular outdoor painter himself. As always, we would appreciate any location ideas or if members can help with contacts to interesting places such as farms, boatyards & any interesting old buildings for fresh challenges as public beauty spots in this area are often very busy with visitors.
4.4 Exhibitions, Club Holiday and Website
Exhibitions
Another busy year for CAC, with our own exhibitions and supporting the Cookham Festival
Spring : 50 members, sales up on previous Spring sales, good footfall .
May: Cookham Festival, The Ferry Inn hosted a small exhibition. Theme, an unusual view of Cookham, ‘Guess Where?’
August: 68 members, 8 non-members, back to pre-covid numbers. 2D entries increased, footfall is almost 700 up on last year. Sales, were good, once again a small loss, it would be nice to cover all costs but, maybe next year if we can increase non-members exhibiting. We had 6 members exhibiting for the 1st time.
September: Cookham Dean Village Fete, we had a lovely display that was well visited, and a couple of sales.
From October until January next year Tuesday painters have a small exhibition at Elizabeth House, to date we have sold 3 paintings and some cards.
Pinder Hall have introduced and Artist in Residence for their entrance area.
The 6ft x 4ft area is on each side of the entrance.
There is a local artist in Residence until December. In January Karen Comber and Satu Vartiainen have been selected by the Chair of Pinder Hall, and will be displaying their work until March. If anyone would like to display work from March to July please contact me directly for details of the application process.
All information for any of the exhibitions is on the website.
Holiday 2024
10 of us went to at Dolserau Hall House, Dlogellau, Gwynedd., in the lovely Snowdonia region. The weather was very Welsh, we arrived to a very wet Wales, despite overnight rain most days, we all managed to get painting in pleasant conditions. Once again, we were asked to display some of the art produced over the week, Ruth Daniel was our worthy winner.
We have booked to stay with HF Holidays, at Harrington House, Bourton on the Water, Cotswolds. Friday 6th June-Friday 13th June 2025.
Website 2024
Karen Comber is keeping the website up to date. There have been a few technical issues with layout, as yet unresolved.
We are asking for someone to support Karen who can update our Facebook and Instagram pages.
The online registration appears to be working really well. For those without access to web etc contact can still be made using phone and post.
5. Treasurer’s Report
The Balance Sheet shows our total funds increased by £804.45 in the latest financial year, so we remain in a sound financial position with £23,474.13 in our Current and Deposit accounts and Cash in hand.
Most of the increase in our funds is due to interest received on our deposit account, while our current account shows a small increase.
In August we made a loss of £440 on a very successful Summer Exhibition in another difficult year. Sales and commission earned were better than last year, but the cost of hiring Pinder Hall increased by £150. However as the year-end financial position shows, we are able to accept that result and the purpose of the exhibition is not to make a profit but to give you the opportunity of showing and selling your work.
Subscription income rose by £60, and we currently have 145 paying members and 10 Life Members.
General Account & Cash in Hand – these show a year on year increase of £20.54 and currently stand at £3,005.20.
Reserve Account – this increased by £783.91 to £20,468.93.
The accounts have once again been audited by Mrs Sue Le Page, to whom I am very grateful.
Freddie Daniel
6. Election of Chairman and Committee
All members of the Committee are willing to stand again.
6.1 Election of Chairman
Re-election of Chairman: Proposed by Kay Lamb, Seconded by Gill Griffith.
6.2 Election of Committee
All the Committee had indicated they were willing to stand again. Nominated by Tess Marsh, Seconded by Ruth Daniel.
7. Any Other Business
There were no questions or matters raised.
Kay Lamb, President rose to thank the Committee on behalf of members for their hard work throughout the year and hope for continuation next year.
8. Chairman’s closing remarks and introduction of our guest speaker
Thank you to the committee for your reports. I will conclude the meeting with introducing our guest speaker, Karen French (welcome, Karen). We will stop for some refreshments, after which Karen will address us with a talk with the intriguing title of ‘Putting the Power in your Art’.
Meeting closed at 15.00hrs.