Old Glory Creole Jazz Band painting

All went well in the benefit auction of this piece on July 17th 2010 and from that a handsome sum donated towards running future Lafrowda Festivals.

For the last eight years I’ve been doing paintings based on the Lafrowda Day parades that are the culmination of our Lafrowda Festival in Cornwall’s most westerly town of St Just-in-Penwith. Seven years ago the picture I’d made based on the 2003 Festival sold at a benefit auction for the Cornish art archive and every year since then I’ve run benefit auctions of these paintings for the Lafrowda Festival itself, an event that is expensive for our local community to put on and that is well worth your support.

This year I again ran such an auction. This time the piece was my Lafrowda 2008  painting  based on groups of drumming, banner waving school-children as they processed past my studio to the accompaniment of Samba bands. Again I was able to raise a substantial sum to donate toward the running of future festivals in the town.

This year it was the New Orleans style marching band heading up the lantern procession at the end of Lafrowda Day in mid July that provided my inspiration and led to the recently completed Old Glory New Orleans Jazz band painting. The bold shapes and brassy colours emerging from the night were irresistable to me and I lost no time in getting to work so that now at the beginning of September as I write the new piece has just appeared here (click on the title above to view the picture).

This year I’m running things a little differently for the benefit sale of the picture. First of all I’m currently intending to include it in my Lived-in landscapes shows next spring and to this end I’ve put an exhibition price on it. However from now until the New Year a 25% discounted price is available to anyone prepared to take delivery of the picture (postage and packing included) after the last showing of the exhibition which ends on 11th June 2010. Apart from £75 retained to cover materials and publicity costs the proceeds will be donated as before to Lafrowda Festival.

It may be that it doesn’t sell in this way in which case it will be up for auction on Lafrowda day 2010 like it’s predecessors and as before I’m starting the auction online. Bids start at the figure of £75 so that I can be sure to cover costs as explained above. This year too I’ll be sending a rolled unmounted print to everyone who makes a bid and will do so straight away when you send me the address to send it to! You can be a part of this by making a bid for the painting through the contact page. Of course if it sells through the exhibition or online in the meantime, or if someone else tops your bid, you’ll have won a free print as a thankyou for supporting this fund-raising effort!

Click on the title of this post to leave a comment.

 
(click on the thumbnail for a much clearer view)

This painting is based on the second in the cycle of Cornish Miracle plays from the fifteenth century known as The Ordinalia. It was performed in the Plen-an-Gwary, ( playing place ) in the centre of St. Just-in-Penwith in August / September 2001 by The Ordinalia Company, made up of the people of St. Just and the surrounding area (and a core production team of professional theatre practitioners). The third play in the cycle, The Resurrection, was later presented in August 2002 and THE FULL CYCLE in August 2004.

In the spring of 2007 the Ordinalia’s much loved director Dominic Knutton tragically died and it has been proposed that the hut adjoining the Plen, which was used as a vital backstage area for the productions, should be renamed the KNUTTON hut. The St Just community, represented by the town trust, aims to purchase this structure and develop it as part of the facilities at the Plen. To this end we are raising money so that the trust can buy the hut and the land that it is built on and the total proceeds from the sale of the painting have been donated to this appeal.