Last week I was in the Nottingham area and while i was there decided to spend an afternoon at the Patching Art Festival, which is situated just north of Nottingham. According to the literature it is Europe's largest outdoor art festival and I am told that in its 35 year history it is going from strength-to-strength. Not sure how accurate this is but it is certainly one of the UK's largest art events.
It ran from Thursday 11th - Sat 13th July (10am-5pm). I chose to do late morning on the Thursday for a few hours. I was suprised at how well the event was origanise and run. Ample parking in an adjacent field and thankfully the rain stayed away ensuring access was fine.
While I was there I attended a couple of demonstration, Soraya French and Tushar Sabale who both did very different citiscapes. I also purchased some pelin air supplies from inside a couple of the marquees. If you are in the market for additional art supplies it is a great place to go and pick yourselves up a bargain or two at discounted prices.
What I went for and the reason I go t galleries and exhibitions.... isn't to buy materials but see what fellow artists are producing and sometimes get a bit of inspiration. There are 2 large marquees dedicated to artists ( one of them being more craft based arts and not really of interest to myself) For those that dont know, you must be invited to exhibit at Patchings. You can put you name forward for consideration but at the end of the day you still need inviting.
this is where my main gripe with the event has been. I saw very little art that was innovative or drammatically different. Also I saw no graphic design, anyone using charcoal..... i just found it very limiting. Then those i did see many were very similar with a number of notable exceptions.
Patching Art Festival
For example..... i found the watercolourists very 'chocolate box like'. I thought the plein air artists were drab and grey with no real colourists. Dont get me wrong. there are some amazing artists but i found very few with a distinctive style that was anything different from the pack. I have no idea how much is costs to exhibit but it wont be cheap, but thankfully many of the artists were making sales and engaging with their audience. Pity however that I found a number of artists....a couple well known. that put their head down and painted and it fealt like they were trying to ignore the members of the public. I have stood on numerous stands and it can be very tiring and is really hard work but you have to make the extra effort to engage with people.
Summary
Patchings Art Festival is worth going but plan your time because there is only so much art materials you can buy and browsing others people's work is not the same as creating art yourself.
Would I go again? yes and no..I wou
ldnt attend as a visitor but if ever give the opportunity to attend as an artist with my own stand, then i feel it would be totally worthwhile.
Notable artists that I really liked and offered something different:
Rosie Smith. https://www.rosiesmithartist.com
Sarah Stokes. https://www.sarahstokesartist.co.uk
Sue Gray. https://susan-gray.co.uk
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