Acclaimed online art magazine Earthmonster Illustrated have featured a link to the Forecourt Art Group website on their front page.

The magazine highlights artists and exhibitions from around the world and always has interesting interviews and articles. We would like to thank the editors for this honour.

The issue is a Halloween Special and is not for the fainthearted. You can view it here
http://earthmonster.wordpress.com/

The Forecourt Art Group has operated for over 50 years and locals may be familiar with the open air exhibitions held on Broad Street each summer.

Aberdeen City Council came to the rescue when the Art Group had to move from Langstane Kirk (now the Soul Bar) and renovated the walkway under St. Nicholas House into the Underpass Outdoor Gallery.

Next summer will be the last Underpass Exhibition due to relocation and renovation of the new council headquarters.

The group are now be looking for a suitable City Centre location to carry on the tradition in 2011.

The search will begin as early as February 2010, and the group would very much welcome suggestions and offers put forward by the local community and enterprise.

The group is a not for profit organization, bringing affordable, accessible art to the public, so expensive retail outlets and lets are not an option- however all reasonable offers will be explored.

The Forecourt Art Group’s annual winter exhibition continues at the Peterculter Heritage Hall.

The exhibition will remain open  each Saturday and Sunday 12- 4pm (with teas and home baking served from 2pm) until closing on Sunday 29th November.

This exhibition  features the broadest range of artists for some time, with 24 exhibitors displaying 72 new works in a variety of media. There will also be a range of unframed works, photographs, prints  and cards.

All works are available for purchase and immediate collection.

At the New Pitsligo Visual Arts Exhibition last week both Anthony Tees and Ian Watt won a prize for their work: Anthony for his painted ceramics and Ian for his painting of Gamrie.

The Autumn Exhibition of the Forecourt Art Group will take place at the Heritage Hall, Peterculter – where we have had two very successful previous exhibitions.

The Opening night will be on Friday 30th October and it will run daily (except Wednesdays) for two full weeks. Thereafter it will be on for two further weekends.

More details to follow.

On Saturday 29th August we met up at the village square, Monymusk for a painting outing.

Once again the committee were out in force, but no other members showed up, which was disappointing. It would be good to see the general members supporting the outings which are laid on for them! This was only 40 minutes from the centre of Aberdeen.

Some invited guests had come along, so all was not lost.

After fortifying ourselves with some great food and, in some cases strong drink, at the local pub, we set off.

We set up by the banks of the Don, with a clear view to Mither Tap and the broad expanse of Benachie.

Two members were working with acrylics, one drawing, and our guests were all using watercolours.

The sun played hide and seek, but after about two hours it finally disappeared and with the wind starting to gust more strongly, we decided to pack up.

Everyone though that it had been a great success.

Bill, Anita, Ann and their guest headed back home, while Ian led his guests on a hike up to a nearby lake, well stocked with fish, it appeared. There we took a good number of photos to work on back at base.

Finally it was time to head home.

As you’ll see from the pictures below, this was an ideal location and one to which all said that they’d like to return. Maybe we can entice more people there next year!

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I’ve added a new links page to the site. For the moment it has local art supplies, framers and galleries but I’ll add to it.

All suggestions welcome – either for categories or content for those categories!

You can access it from the top navigation strip of the site.

Hot on the heels of the very successful Summer 2009 exhibition, watch out for further details of our Autumn 2009 show coming up in November at the Heritage Hall,  Peterculter.

We’ll be announcing exact dates in the next few weeks.

Welcome to our new website which has been created for the group by Kenneth Watt of
TechnoFinger.

Special thanks also go to Wayne Mo and Stuart Smith of Lighthouse Design for kindly designing the new logo for us.

We aim to keep the website updated with news of exhibitions, profiles and galleries of artists’ work, and news of local and national art events which would be of interest to the wider art community.

Ian Watt
Secretary