One of the events we look forward to each year is the Edinburgh College of Art degree show. It cunningly coincides with our wedding anniversary, and we’ve had some successes finding items to buy over the last few years.
This year, we couldn’t settle on anything we really liked, and left empty handed.
Thankfully, in September, we were able to attend an Artists at Home event in Abbeyhill. A lot of artists live in the colony flats there (and other colonies around the city), and they’ve been opening up their homes for a couple of years now. You see as many or as few as you like, often enjoy a drink, and browse the art, which is also to buy.
Funnily enough, we’d also been to an Artists at Home event in London earlier in June – the first time we’d been aware of these events. Dan’s mum Jen teaches pottery in a couple of centres in London, and some of the people who attend her classes are also established artists in other fields. One particularly friendly student even fed us smoked salmon as well as a glass of wine…not guaranteed, of course, but a great way to get you in the mood for choosing some art.
So it turned out that at the event in Edinburgh, we were able to buy an oil painting for the first time, created by Emily Ingrey-Counter, who we know from church. Her collection was based on birds of various types, and we came away with a great picture of a heron. The heron is now just waiting for us to put up the picture in our study. Perhaps it’ll help keep the magpies at bay outside.