A visit to an art fair, and back to some abstract painting

Last Friday, I went to the annual International Art Zurich - Contemporary Art Fair. I was given a free ticket for two at work, and my Mum was happy to join me. It was already the 17th fair, but I have to admit that it was the first time I visited it. But I'm glad I did. It was really inspiring. The exhibitors were both galleries and individual artists, some from as far as Australia and Thailand, but also many national and local ones. There were lots of mediums and styles on show, and although not all of them were to my taste, I appreciated the high quality of the works. There were only about two or three paintings, which in my personal opinion, weren't very impressive and didn't really quite fit the high quality standard of the fair. But as I said, that's just my very personal opinion. I prefered the individual artist exhibitors to the galleries, and apart from the very inspiring work of theirs, I also found it interesting to see how they presented their work and themselves. I collected a lot of business cards, flyers, cards etc. It's always good to get some ideas of how these things can be done. You never know. It was also interesting, though, to see what kind of paintings/artists the galleries represented.

After the visit to the fair, my Mum and me walked through the cold, wettish and autumny city, looking for a place to have lunch, before taking the train back. Back home, I just felt inspired to go to my studio and take out some paint tubes. I've always liked abstracts, and I used to paint a lot more of them earlier, but much less recently. But now I felt like getting back to it again. I've mentioned in last week's post how our own expectations can often get in the way before we even start a drawing or painting. I think that abstract painting can help with overcoming those expectations, as it is a much more intuitive process. I enjoyed very much putting these first layers on, and I'm looking forward to the weekend now to add some more and see where it goes. Apart from the visit to the art fair, it's heavily insired by the season. I'm not a fan of yellow at all, at least not of a cold, lemony yellow. But all the deep golden yellows of the leaves outside have definitely made me grab those yellow paint tubes. And we get a lot of grey, foggy days with the clouds hanging low here too. I love autumn!