The Blackbird Sings

Will I ever get to Paris?

I am beginning to ask myself that question.

At the moment I am tied to my workspace in England, painting morning and night trying to finish commissions (and start others), and making four new paintings for an upcoming show in Devon later this month. The fact is that until a certain amount of work is finished, I can't go anywhere! I was originally planning to go to Paris at the beginning/middle of May...then it got pushed back to the end of May...then the plan was to go around mid-June...and now it's the end of June at the earliest! Trying to plan anything around the hectic schedule of either Leon or myself is proving a wee bit troublesome.

My view (most days). © Natasha Newton 2010

As you can imagine, although I love what I do and wouldn't change it for anything, it's difficult to accept that even though I could literally just go to Paris tomorrow, I have responsibilities that mean I can't. I'm so excited about going that I feel like jumping up and down when I think of it. I can't wait to be there, and to share everything with you as well - I can blog as much as I like as I'll have access to Leon's iMac in his apartment, so expect lots of photos of my (mis)adventures in Gay Paree!

For now, it's back to work ---> the sooner I get finished, the sooner I can hop on the Eurostar. Au revoir pour l'instant!

New Bird Painting | Exhibition News

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned I had something to tell you about the upcoming exhibition I was having in Aldeburgh called 'Northern Lights', with the illustrator Simon Wild and composer Leon Milo? Well, instead of taking place this Summer as planned, we have decided to postpone the show until next Spring. We'll be deciding on the new dates soon and will keep you updated! It's a shame to have to postpone but we feel it's the right decision - 2010 has become a very busy year for all of us, time was quickly slipping away and it would have been hard to organise the exhibition in time and make all of the work required. If we're going to do it, we want to do it right, and so we're giving ourselves much more time!

Unbelievably, even though the Northern Lights show has been cancelled this summer, I'm still snowed under with commissions and work for galleries! I'm in the process of making four new bird paintings for a show at a gallery in Dartmouth, Devon later this month (I'll give you details about that particular show nearer the time), and sometime in July I'll be delivering a selection of new paintings to the Serena Hall Gallery in Southwold, Suffolk. I also have a show in Sylt, Northern Germany coming up in the Autumn. But first I would like to show you this new piece:

Penelope Sings A Song Of Autumn

Acrylic on deep-edge canvas. 18x14"

© Natasha Newton 2010

SOLD (Commission)

Penelope is the second of the three paintings commissioned by Best of Suffolk for their gorgeous holiday cottages in Aldeburgh. The third and final piece is well underway and I'm working on it again today so it will be finished very soon. It was interesting to work on this new monochrome bird painting - it's the first time I've made a painting on canvas using only black and white paints! Any grey areas you can see are actually finely cross-hatched white lines over a black base. As you probably know, I work in B&W fairly often, but all of these pieces have been illustrations on paper. I'm so pleased with the way Penelope has turned out that I'm planning on making at least one B&W bird painting for the gallery in Devon.

I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see you soon with some new work!

Some good news and some photographs...

A quick blog post to share some snippets of good news with you, and a couple of photographs taken in London last week.

Good News

1. This blog now has 1570 followers on Typepad alone! It passed the 1500 mark while I was sleeping the other night, so it was a nice surprise when I woke up and realised. This figure doesn't include the people who subscribe via the Feedblitz widget (I'm guessing about another 40 or 50) in the left-hand column, or people who follow or visit in any other way. I can't tell you how chuffed this makes me feel - it's taken about a year and a half to get to this point and I appreciate every single one of you, whether you read it or whether you take the time to comment regularly too. I remember that when I first started the blog I felt as if I was writing and hardly anyone was reading it (apart from a select few - you know who you are!), but I continued and it now has a really significant readership...which encourages me to blog even more, so thank you!

2. I was interviewed for the Creative Boom website the other day, about art and life in general and my Random House book covers in particular. You can read the full interview here: Interview With Natasha Newton

© Natasha Newton 2010

3. And on the same day as the other two events, I found that I was featured on Etsy's official blog The Storque again! This was a total surprise and was excellent publicity for the shop, with lots of people discovering it for the first time and adding it to their favourites. This Patterned Cloud illustration (above) was part of a curated collection of items for the home chosen by Tori Mellott (previously Decorating Editor at Domino magazine and former creative deputy at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia - she's now US Editor at mydeco.com). She described me as being one of her "favourite artists on Etsy". (!!) It pretty much made my day! If you'd like to see the feature, please click here: Storque Article

London

And lastly (but not leastly) here are a couple of photos to feast your eyes upon...

 

Brick Lane, London.

© Natasha Newton 2010

 

Brick Lane, London.

© Natasha Newton 2010

 

The view from our comfy sofa in The Water Poet pub, Folgate Street, London.

© Natasha Newton 2010

And no, it wasn't me who defaced the menu...honest, guv.

My Paintings as Book Covers

I've been promising to give you the details of my recent exciting news, so here it is...

At the beginning of the month I was contacted by the book publishers Random House. They had discovered my artwork and wanted to ask whether they could use not one but five different paintings as book cover illustrations for a series of books by the same author! I would have been bowled over if they had wanted to use my work for one book, but a whole series is a dream come true. To cut a long story short, the author has now approved the covers, Random House have the images, and the publication date is set for March 2010. The designer at Random House has sent some examples to me via email of how the books will look and I couldn't be happier with how they've used my artwork within the overall design - simple, clean, and very stylish - I can't wait to show you, but I have to wait until next year!

The books are by the author Jorge Bucay, a psychotherapist and writer from Argentina whose work has been translated into seventeen different languages. I have been dealing with a division of Random House International called Random House Mondadori, based in Barcelona, Spain. As you can imagine, it's a wonderful opportunity for me to license my images in this way and for my work to be seen by a whole new audience in a different country.

Those of you who own my work may be interested to know which paintings are being used, so here is a list of the five pieces:

Talking To The Trees. Acrylic on deep-edge canvas. 8x8" © Natasha Newton 2009
An image of this piece can be found here: Talking To The Trees

Magic Forest 2. Acrylic on deep-edge wood panel. 8x6" © Natasha Newton 2008
An image of this piece can be found here: Magic Forest 2

Falling. Acrylic on deep-edge canvas. 12x12" © Natasha Newton 2008
An image of this piece can be found here: Falling

Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day. Acrylic on deep-edge wood panel. 6x6" © Natasha Newton 2008
An image of this piece can be found here: Tomorrow Will Be A Better Day

Intermission. Acrylic on deep-edge canvas. 16x12" © Natasha Newton 2008
An image of this piece can be found here: Intermission

If you are the owner of any of these pieces, I hope you'll be as pleased and excited as I am to know that they are being used in this way!

That's all I can tell you for now, but I'll keep you informed of any developments.

Back soon with more new work for the solo show in October!

For Your Information

I am still here. I have not been abducted by aliens. I am still working. I am a bit frazzled.

But I am making lots of nice paintings and illustrations for the show and will post them here on the blog soon. I wanted to do a whole bunch at once but I would like to finish another one (or two) before I do that so I'm hanging on until then.

Please bear with me. Or bare with me. One or the other. The second might be more exciting, but we'd probably get arrested.