Just a couple of things..

Opening line of ‘Ode to Autumn’ by John Keats.

Late September, Autumn (or Fall), means kids back into school, holidays over, suntans fading, a garden full of spider webs, and artists preparing for a season of exhibitions until Christmas.

As you probably know Artists Open Houses in Brighton has been a remarkable annual event held during May for over 30 years. More recently it expanding to an extra two or three pre-Christmas weekends, also very popular, with more artists joining every year.

However, after 23 years open house wear and tear to our hall carpet Fran and I thought that we deserved a rest. So instead of opening our own house again, we let someone else do it. For Christmas 2016 we will be guest artists in another artist’s exhibition. We are guest artists at our daughters Open House. The show starts this coming weekend. It continues for two more weekends.

We found that one problem of putting on a Christmassy exhibition in mid November was sourcing a Christmas tree several weeks earlier than other people. We solved the problem but discovered that you can’t expect a tree to survive intact fully laden with tinsel etc for so many weeks. The needles drop! You dare not go near it in case it dumps sharp little shards of pain all over the floor. The timing was perfect. By Christmas Day the tree would be a wreck.

Another snag about December for an art exhibition is that it gets dark in the UK about two hours before we want to close. So we had to get special exhibition lighting system installed.

Another thing is…. Ooops! I seem to be starting a rant.

Have you seen my signed fine art greetings cards with our black cat Trevor with a cake or Christmas tree etc, or small signed prints for ideal gifts?

You can see them for just three weekends at the upcoming Open House.

But if you cannot come to the exhibition then you can also see them at my new Etsy.com web-shop called RuffellDirect.

Here are links to our various websites where you can find a whole bunch of original paintings, signed prints, and signed greetings cards.