Royston Arts Society has decided to cancel its Annual Autumn Exhibition in Royston Town hall. This was due to be held over the weekend of 24th to 26th September as part of the Royston Arts Festival.

We will be continuing with the planned Online Autumn Exhibition. This will open on the RAS website on Friday 24th September and continue through to 1st December 2021.

Click HERE for further details about our decision.

We continue to welcome entries for this online exhibition from RAS members and artists who are not members of RAS.

THE DEADLINE FOR ENTERING THE EXHIBITION IS TUESDAY 31st AUGUST 2021.

If you would like to enter some paintings or look at our guide on photographing paintings please click on the appropriate link below to open or download the file. (Note: You may need to “Enable Editing” to use downloaded files.)

Entry form for RAS members

Entry from for artists who are not members of RAS

How to Photograph a Painting

The Members Exhibition has now finished but we have some events planned for members in July and August as follows:

Painting Sessions

Tuesday 6th July – Please bring a mask to wear and observe social distancing and note that we must limit numbers to 30 (members only) to comply with Town Council rules for hiring their rooms.
Tuesday 20th July – The restrictions might be lifted the day before this session. However, please bring along a mask just in case Royston Town Council has not had time to change the rules that we signed up to for these socially distanced events!
Tuesday 3rd August and Tuesday 17th August – Hopefully we will be able to run “normal” painting sessions without social distancing or mask wearing but we will have to wait and see.

Art Demonstration

Friday 9th July – Ian Davy Brown will be painting a boatyard using watercolours in a semi abstract style. Please bring a mask to wear and observe social distancing and note that we must limit numbers to 30 (members only) to comply with Town Council rules for hiring their rooms.

We have now run three socially distanced painting sessions and one demo. Thanks to those who have attended for observing the rules and keeping everybody safe.

We are delighted to have 30 artists exhibiting a total of 170 paintings in our ‘Members’ online art exhibition which starts on Saturday 17th April.

Just click on the poster below and that will take you to our new exhibition website where you can easily view the works of selected artists or browse the entire collection of paintings at your leisure.

All the paintings are for sale and there are forms to express an interest in buying a painting or provide us with some feedback for the exhibition which will be gratefully received.

We hope you enjoy it!

Subject to any changes in the current Govt ‘Road Map’ and the lifting of Covid regulations we plan to start our  21/22 programme with an Online Exhibition of Members’ Work between 17th April and 17th June 2021 which can be viewed via this website.

Our practical painting sessions will recommence on the 1st and
3rd Tuesday of most months from June 2021 onwards; from 2pm to 4pm in Market Hill Rooms, Fish Hill, Royston SG8 9DW.

A revised programme of demonstrations, which take place on the second Friday of the month, can be found at the right hand side of this page and the first one will hopefully take place on Friday 11th June 2021.

Our Autumn Art Exhibition will be held on 24th to 26th September 2021 in Royston Town Hall in collaboration with the Royston Arts Festival. It is a premier event in the Hertfordshire and South
Cambridgeshire art scene and features the sale of affordable art by 70 to 80 local artists. We typically have over 400 paintings for sale. There is currently no hanging fee for RAS members, who can exhibit up to four framed and five unframed paintings, plus cards. For this year, we will charge a reduced commission of 10% on all sold work.

Please check the this website and Facebook page for any updates on Covid or other matters. You can sign up to receive a notification when new posts appear on this website – see ‘SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG VIA EMAIL’ at bottom of right column.

 

This is a reminder that we’ll be holding Royston Art Society’s 2020 AGM on Friday 8 January 2021 starting at 7.30pm.  Papers for the meeting (Agenda, Draft Minutes of the 2019 AGM, Chairman’s Report, and Financial Report) were attached to an email that RAS Members will have received from Secretary Peter Morgan.

The AGM will be conducted via a Zoom meeting and the joining instructions were also included in Peter’s email.

If you have any questions that you would like to raise before the meeting, or didn’t receive the email about it, please let us know by contacting either Richard Clayton chair@roystonarts.org.uk or Peter Morgan secretary@roystonarts.org.uk.

We hope you’ll be able to join in on the 8th of January.  In the meantime, a Happy New Year to everyone!

Our successful online Autumn Exhibition has now finished and unfortunately all other RAS activities for 2020 have been suspended owing to the increased concerns about Covid-19. This includes the Tuesday painting sessions and the remaining Demo sessions.

The RAS committee are disappointed to take this step but feel that it is a sensible precaution to protect its members.

Our ‘online’ Autumn Exhibition attracted just over 1,000 views during the online Royston Arts Festival 2020 and continues to attract further viewings.

The Exhibition will run until the end of November and visitors can enquire about purchasing any of the paintings on view and seven have already been sold. To start just click on the exhibition poster at the right.

If you would like to visit the main Royston Arts Festival website to check the programme, most of which is still available to view online, just click HERE. This includes another exhibition by young artist Eve who studies at Bassingbourn Village College. The video was put together by Royston Museum and can be viewed by clicking on Royston Museum on the festival programme page.

 

Following a consultation amongst the Society’s committee members we have decided to hold another online exhibition in place of this year’s Autumn Exhibition in the Town Hall. This decision was partly informed by the knowledge that Royston Arts Festival will be mainly or wholly an online event commencing Friday 18th September.

Artists will able to enter about 3 -4 paintings. and society members will be able to enter free of charge with a reduced commission rate of  of 10% on paintings sold. Non-members will have to pay £2 per painting plus a reduced commission rate of 15% on sales, the usual level for all artists being 20%.

The registration deadline of Thursday 25th June 2020 has now passed and no more entries will be accepted except from those members without email, who have been separately contacted, and any new members joining before 13th August.

 

We are pleased to announce the relaunching of our first ‘online’ Members Exhibition with the addition of 3 more artists from 1st June and the exhibition will now run until its close on 30th June 2020.

To start just click on the exhibition poster at the right and you can also use the top menu to navigate your way around the exhibition.

We hope you enjoy our exhibition and welcome any feedback which you can email to the (online) Exhibition Organiser, Carl Filby,  by clicking HERE.

 

In the light of the Government statement on Coronavirus measures on Monday, the Committee has decided to cancel all Royston Arts Society events and activities for the next four months or so.

We are cancelling the following:
Art Demonstrations; we have cancelled the art demos in April, May, June and July. We have no demos planned for August or September. This means that the next art demonstration will be held on 9th October. We plan to re-book the cancelled demos for dates in 2021/22
Painting Sessions; we are cancelling all painting sessions in Market Hill Rooms during April, May, June and July. We do not have any painting sessions in August. So the next planned painting session will be on Tuesday 1st September.
Members Exhibition; we will cancel the Members’ exhibition at Royston Museum and Art Gallery that was planned to run from May to July. We will refund the entry fees that have been paid by artists that have already submitted their entry form.
Library; we will be shutting down the library display until further notice. Those members with paintings on display will be contacted separately to tell them when to come and pick them up. We would hope to open again in September/October.
Autumn Exhibition: we are hoping that the Autumn Exhibition will be able to go ahead as normal at the end of September. Assuming that things are starting to return to normal we will send out the entry forms in late June. The Committee will be reviewing the situation before that date and we will keep all members informed.

The RAS Committee recognises that these cancellations will be disappointing for members. However we feel that there is no other option.

These cancellations will save RAS a considerable sum of money, through cancelled room bookings and demo artist fees. We plan to return the money saved to current members by reducing the membership fee for the 2021/22 membership year. In the meantime, if you haven’t yet renewed your subscription for 2020/21 we very much hope you will still do so by the 31 March deadline. (Please see previous post below.)

The Committee will also be mulling over whether there are any other ways that we can provide useful events/activities that do not involve person to person contact. We would be grateful for any ideas you might have.

Stay safe and keep on painting!