This week my painting ‘Heligan Chickens’ was stolen from the open art exhibition in the Wycombe Arts Festival that opened on Saturday 11^th May.

Watercolour – Heligan Chickens

I arrived early on the following Tuesday morning for my stewarding slot to find an empty space.  Elated that I had had a sale I went over to the reception desk to investigate the details only to have a horrible slow realization sink in when I couldn’t find any evidence for the sale in the sales book and receipts.

Apart from hearing the rather unhelpful ‘this has never happened before’ the overwhelming response from well meaning sympathetic ears is that it is a compliment to have a painting stolen.

I don’t understand the sentiment, after all who would feel complimented had someone stolen a valued piece of your hard work and time such as a car, computer, a piece of written work or a design?

Personally I feel insulted that the despicable excuse for a human being was not prepared to part with the cash value of their hard work and time.

Having never experienced such a situation my first reaction to protect the rest of my work was to say I wished to withdraw from the exhibition only to be threatened with exclusion from all future exhibitions should I do so.

Fortunately it seems this was a hasty uncalculated statement made by a rather insensitive and fearful individual as when I took the matter further I verified that this would not be the case.

In reflection and in an attempt to reduce feelings of helplessness and victimization the actions I recommend to any exhibiting artist out there are:

• Record everything, always have good quality photos of your work and photograph your display from the outset.
• Report the theft to the police, you will need the crime reference number if you are insured and if like me you were not, it will still come in handy should you discover the painting somewhere in the future.
• Don’t exhibit anywhere unless you can securely* fix your painting to the support (*something that would require a thief to used a cutting implement such as wire or a cable tie).  In this event because the supports where of a nature where you could not tie the paintings to them John tied a strong nylon cord through the D-rings at the back of the paintings effectively linking them all together so that one could not be lifted off on its own.
• Insist on price tags and/or markers to be fixed to the support as well as the painting so that as soon as a painting is removed it becomes very obvious that it is missing.
• Insist on a process of wrapping a purchased painting with the receipt taped to it so that no one is walking around with an unwrapped item and can go unchallenged.
• Consider the stewarding arrangements carefully.  I know now that if I can’t be there myself I wouldn’t be comfortable with anything less than two stewards on duty.
• When it comes to your hard work and time don’t trust in the goodness of humanity, if you can’t be there every second be insured.

It has been an unpleasant week and just when my belief in goodness of others is at an all time low the recycle bin men have gone a good way to redeeming that belief.

I forgot to put the paper and plastic recycle bins onto the sidewalk and the guys realizing this took the initiative and went to the trouble of fetching them from the side of the house.  Small kindnesses go a long way.

The phrase ‘The Devil is in the Detail’ refers to an idea that whatever one does should be done thoroughly.  An unprecedented level of skill is required to produce photorealistic art with minute attention to detail.  But this is not to say there is an equal level of skill required in producing more loose and expressive art that transcends the capability of photographs, injecting a dynamism and quality of unique human expression.

A recent visit to the Ashmolean museum in Oxford brought this idea to light when I came across a painting titled ‘Eight Donkeys’ in which Chinese artist Huang Zhou has managed to encapsulate the essence of a donkey in a masterful simplicity of brushwork.

Eight Donkeys by Huang Zhou

Since I love the details in life, one of the hardest things for me to do as an artist is to concentrate on recording the basic form and line of the subject first.  Inspired by Huang Zhou I set to work with charcoal on ‘Bliss, Common Seal’.

Bliss, Common Seal by Nicky Muizelaar

I was very pleased with result as it communicates the feeling I wanted to convey, although no doubt Mr Huang Zhou would have said I used far too many strokes to achieve it.  Back to the drawing board and armed with a brush and sepia watercolour I completed ‘Let Loose’, a play on words in more ways than one.

Let Loose by Nicky Muizelaar

A lot less strokes, but no less thought and consideration as to where and how to place them and in what paint concentration.  Not quite as spontaneous as the Chinese painting technique.  But a step in the right direction to achieving that looseness and sense of movement, the very essence of the subject which inspired me.

If you are similarly afflicted with a preoccupation with detail, here are a list of techniques I used to counteract it:

• Start off with thumbnail sketches of the darkest and lightest tones.
• Place your source image several metres away from your observation point.
• Blur your source image by placing a film of tracing paper over it or photoshop it into black & white.
• When working from life, squinting your eyes is a time honoured technique.
• Don’t overthink and spend endless time planning, just sit down and draw/paint.
• Repeat the exercise over and over again, the above image ‘Let Loose’ is my third attempt.

Have you found any other ingenius methods that work for you?