Spa Satori

I will now have work on display/for sale at the lovely Spa Satori in Manchester's Northern Quarter. They have one canvas available at the moment but I hope to add to their collection just as soon as I can.

This canvas can now be found in their super-relaxing chill out lounge...

Koi painting study.

Home Learning Centre, Gujarat

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bit rubbish at regular blog posts, however a project came to my attention recently by way of visitors to my studio, and I thought it really was worth a mention.

Gautam and Krutika Patel visited my studio back in August. Here is photo of Krutika and I, where I am looking slightly sheepish as usual! (Posing for photographs isn't one of my strong points).

Gautam and Krutika used to live in the Manchester area but have now returned to Gujarat in India where they have set up the Home Learning initiative and are helping children from the most deprived areas to read and write.

This recent newspaper article gives a great overview of their project and some wonderful photos of the work they are doing can be found on their flickr page.

I asked Gautam if they accept donations of books to help them along, and this was his reply...

We would happily welcome donations of books. One element of our initiative is to provide children with the 'least', an experience of the best learning - this has been supported wonderfully by dear family and friends who have sent to us high-quality books from the UK that we struggle to find in India. Access to high-quality books has been a challenge. These days we are directly in touch with the best publishers in India of Gujarati-language, Hindi-language and Bi-lingual (with English) books - and have a good selection of local books for the children. We also have a growing selection of high-quality children's books from the UK and USA, you may be familiar with the Oxford Reading Tree series - the children have loved these and their thoughtful design is amazing in building reading skills and passion. We would be delighted if you would like to contribute to the range of books for these children.

For anybody who would like to help, their address is,

Gautam & Krutika Patel
242, G-1 type
Sector 9
Gandhinagar 382009
Gujarat, India

So, well done the Patels! I hope it goes from strength to strength.

Sydenham Arts Festival

Last weekend I tootled down to London for a rainy but fun weekend at Sydenham Arts Fesitval.

I began by finally visiting Webbs Fine Art, where Liz and Sue have been showing (and selling) my work for a little while now, based in the very nice Clapham/Battersea area of the city. From there I continued up to The Wallace Collection near Oxford Street where I had a swift but welcome half of ale with my good friend Sophie, who I used to work with at the Whitworth Art Gallery. Then on to Barnet where I was picked up by one of my best and oldest friends Sue, who generously put me up for the stay. (By oldest I mean we go back a bit - she's not ancient.)


Liz, the owner at Webbs, lives in Sydenham and so she had kindly included my work in an event at Mayow Community Gardens. As an experiment I was to be tucked away in an extremely cute little shed, which was full of character and with the surrounding flower beds alive with bees and butterflies it really was a beautiful setting. Just a short way away there was the work of several other artists, plus creative demonstrations, tea, and plenty of cake, so it all felt very relaxed and lovely. The only downside was the downpours, which hadn't really been counted on. Practicality was not the shed's strong point, but with Sue's help we managed to keep the work safe from harm and had a bit of a laugh into the bargain.

The next day the rain was still persisting so my work was moved to a bigger and more watertight shed, where it was easier for Liz to keep an eye out, so Sue and I took the chance to visit some of the open houses in the area. I felt a bit shy initially going into people's homes but everybody was incredibly welcoming and we saw some lovely work.

Later, a little trip to the Dirt exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, which was well presented and fascinating (also conveniently near Euston for my departure), and I was back off 'up north' before I knew it. I was pooped by the time I got home, but it was a lovely weekend all in all, yes yes.

Sue with the work

Online shoppy shop is go

The Lily Greenwood shop is now online! I have begun by adding a selection of small and medium original canvases, and will be working on listing more items and expanding the ranges available in the coming months.

I hope it all runs smoothly, if you encounter any glitches it would be much appreciated if you could drop me a line and let me know.

To celebrate, throughout June I will be offering 10% discount on purchases with the code 'buyhandmade'.

The shop can be found at http://lilygreenwood.bigcartel.com/

Happy shopping!

love yurts

Blimey, can't believe it was April when I last posted! I've been trying to be better with updates on the old facebook and twitter (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Manchester-United-Kingdom/Lily-Greenwood/20975126267, twitter is lilygreenwood)...but obviously it has been too much for me to cope with blogging too. Must try harder.

I've just spent the last week in a yurt in deepest Wales (Pembrokeshire coast) - and it was fantastic!

It did feel like camping - under canvas (so you could hear the rain really well!), cooking on a little gas stove, candle light - but it was that bit nicer. Very few other people around, nice proper bed, ample room to sit and have a game of scrabble, cosy woodburning stove to warm the yurt, proper covered area to sit and eat outside, barbeque, campfire and so on. The people who ran the place were great - ready to help and interested in what we were doing but not overbearing. They even brought some new fresh flowers for the yurt half way through the week.

We had some lovely walks along the coastal path poking in rock pools, oodles of wine, some nice ales, a day in St Davids where I had a coconut ice cream, a day on Skomer getting within a few metres of Puffins (which were really cute), built a sandcastle, swam in the sea (with the jellyfish - I later found out they aren't stingers) and lots of paddling, all good! Would certainly recommend it.

Chilled Camping - http://www.millhavenplace.co.uk/

Painting is keeping me busy busy all the time, and I have just completed a commission which involved painting all different kinds of insects, very interesting. I've started selling at Pad in Preston, so at the moment you can now get work from my studio, Webbs Fine Art in London, Portico Library and Gallery, Blossom Flowers in Chorlton, Pad in Preston, The Bowery in Leeds, online on Etsy and Folksy, and cards are available from Butterfly World, Herts. Hope I haven't forgotten any where. Phew!

In sadder news my print probably won't be sold in Next any time soon as my publishers The Art Group suddenly went into administration. I'm not so sad for myself as I don't get excited until I see it in person and fingers crossed I have ridden the recession quite well so far - I'm more sad for the 30 staff left redundant without pay or notice. I wish a speedy recovery and new horizons to all of them. On the bright side, my lovely contact there Helen is already coming up with new propositions and would like to look into publishing my work elsewhere, so a silver lining.

Ah look at the time, I better get on! Bye for now!