Midsummer Art Fair

It was not my idea to go to the Midsummer Art Fair in Teddington but it was a good one.

I was tempted to go by friends, the possibility of a beer in the Tide End beforehand and the chance to go to the Landmark Arts Centre that makes good use of a Victorian Gothic church that was never actually completed.

Inside the exhibitors' stalls were crammed in to a few narrow aisles with each artist having a space about 2m long.

I guess this is what they are used to as they do the tour of art fairs and they all made good use of the space allocated to them.

As the brochure shows, there was a wide range of styles and techniques on show and this mix is part of the attraction as it allows you to experience the unexpected.

I only went to have a casual look around but still managed to pick up a few business cards along the way.

Claire West describes her work as Art to make you Smile, and that works for me. The themes are simple, often flowers, and are presented with large dollops of shocking colour and wild exuberance. I also like the simple style and the bold colours, there's a thirties art deco feel here, and that's a good thing.
	Jennie Ing's work "mainly features the urban environment and the places she knows best: London and its nearby area." I like the urban landscape of London too so the attraction was immediate. I also like the simple style and the bold colours, there's a thirties art deco feel here, and that's a good thing.
Shyama Ruffell also likes flowers and draws lots of them individually and in busy meadows. The colours and compositions are sedate and evoke the stillness and beauty of flower in their natural state. There is something very girlie about these pictures but I wear flowery shirts so I live with that.
	Lara Bowen is another fan of flowers and also of bright colours. She also does fruit and landscapes etc. but it is the jolly pictures of flowers stuffed casually in to watering cans that really caught my eye.
Jan Levy is another artist who draws on London for her inspiration and uses bright colours to express it. The effective result is a collage of colour that could almost be abstract art but which, on a longer inspection, reveals itself to be the City skyline.

There were several other artists' work that I liked, and I would have shown you one of Jennifer Jokhoo's stylistic pictures of London buildings and cranes if her website worked, but I think that you get the idea of what was on offer.

The prices were well within temptation range too, typically just a few tens or low hundreds of pounds depending on the size and complexity of the work, and all that stopped me from adding to my limited art collection was my complete lack of preparation.

Next time maybe.