Another perfect day. We went to the Farmers Market in St. Andrews. Lots of specialty meats & fish being venued. We bought some sausages and a few vegetables...as we will be out and about the next couple of days we did not want to over stock. Market is the first Saturday of each month, and if we miss the St. Andrews' market there are others nearby on the next Saturdays.
I made a quick lunch of 1/2 sandwich and lentil soup. Tossed the dishes into the dish washer and we got ready to head out to the beautiful fishing village Pittenweem. We found a nice parking place without having to drive to the parking lots and take a bus. The Pittenweem Festival contains almost 100 artists displaying their work in studios throughout the town. You receive a map and explanation of each artist. As you walk the streets, the studios are numbered with large placards which you can reference in your book. As we began from Marygate (our street where car is parked) We went down Water Wynd towards the harbour. We entered about 10 sudios before going into the first winner of the Bursary Award. Out of the 100 entries, two Bursary Awards are given; one to a final year student in Scottish School of Art whose home is in Fife and another to an artist who has graduated from a Scottish school of Art within the last five years.

The Eli Isaksson award winner was fun. She has a ways to go but I loved chatting with her. She is from Sweden and has just opened a studio south of Stirling. I bought two of her pieces.

Much later we wandered down closer to the harbor again visiting a number of the artists studios.
This is a picture I took of the harbor with the crab pots in front. Aren't I just too artsy fartsy for you! They were selling crabs and largostines at the wharf. we stopped into a pub for a quick break and a pint. Then onward to find the other Bursary award winner.
Along the way we saw so many really great artists who were not winners. I can relate to this feeling...create something wonderful and receive no recognition.

Well I will tell you now about a couple that were incredible.
Paul Bartlett (www.naturalselectiongallery.co.uk) Wonderfuol wildlife paintings with pastel and acrylics and collaged with newsprint of importance to the piece.

Malcolm Cheape!! WOW!!! www.malcolmcheape.com Malcolm spent quite a bit of time with us explaining how he did his incredible maritime paintings...bringing in the background of printed text, pencil or wax work forward into the painting with latex acrylic overlays. Incredible my friends!!

Philip Raskin was another favorite with his interpretations of scotland's scenery with great sensitivity to the medium.

Reinhard Behrens. Craziness to the max. His "The Naboland Film Project" must be researched to understand. He found the toy submarine down at the harbour and from there the inspiration went to somewhere beyond all imagination. We walked through an entire room of his idea of a Naboland submarine room??? The Naboland submarine is just about everywhere in his art, Venice, Cairo, The Artic, Africa...endlessly the submarine travels.. For more on this maybe try www.naboland.co.uk

One of the early galleries visited was that of Fisher Studio & Gallery. This had a few artists and craftworkers exhibiting. But I fell in love with Alan Faulds' "FRIENDS" seen in this picture
I wish I could tell you all of the detail of this sculpture, but I cannot. I wish I could have bought it...but at 800lbs...too much. It is charming and thoughtful. He describes his friends from throughout the world many of whom he has now lost contact with..former emails..former countries..former treks through life. and at the end he says if you would like to be his friend for a small fee of half-million pounds, just leave your name and address and bank and bank account number and you will definitely be his friend for life. Well I am minimizing the size of this sculpture. Truly one of my favorite pieces at the Festival.

Checking the book and map to see who is next.

Finally we come to the other Bursary Award....Ross Brown. Remember this artist's name.
This is the venue just prior to his studio.

Ross Brown's inspiration was the ruined St. Peter's Seminary in Cardross. The site has become a haven for deviant activities and an icon of urban exploration. He paints sometimes heavy scraping movements of the pallette knife and sometimes with a flow of the brush to create almost water like feeling of the architecture that creates a surface tension that is incredible. While his works both have a feeling of the architecture, ambiguous spaces...it brings to mind what we see everyday in life where a disorder has come from a grandeur of the past...and so much more. The catalog did not reference any website, but I suggest you try your best to find out about this truly incredible artist and most certainly deserving of the Bursary Award for 2010.

We did one more circle down the steep cliffside to the wharf and past these beautiful wildflowers (including my favorite BACHELOR BUTTONS). We went past the St. Fillan's Cave. It's history seems to be a mix of lore of pirates stash and Episcopalians worshipping here.
Maybe we will come back and explore the cave.

The last piece I wanted to see was
mounted on the seawall of the harbour by Kaneyuni Simoosako, an invited artist.

Well....we walked up and down the sea hillside at least 3 times and visited many many wonderful artists. So I must just add KUDOS TO MY HUSBAND FOR DOING THIS WITH ME!!! HUGS AND LOVE ALWAYS. He actually did enjoy as much of the as I did. But it was alot of climbing for him considering all that he has been through in the last year with health issues.

Thus said, we discussed it and agreed that to stay on until 9:15 at night for the torch lighting and parade through town carrying our torches and then fireworks at 10:15 was more than we were up too. Alas...so nay pictures of the fire and lights.

Back to St. Andrews and out for a pub fare dinner just up the road a tad.

Great day. HUGE AND BUSY DAY TOMORROW