The Society of Women Artists 158th exhibition 

The 158th annual exhibition of the SWA  was held at the Mall galleries in London. The exhibition opened on Tuesday 24 September with the third Young People’s Art Initiative fund raising event, an evening of Art, music and wine. Tallis trio filled the room with divine music while some of the guests enjoyed using the art materials donated by Cass Art to do some sketching and taking part in a print making workshop by Golden Artists colours educators.  Soraya French the SWA president introduced the speaker for the evening , Kate Carriett the head teacher  at George Abbott School in Guildford who share the SWA’s ethos of support and encouragement of young artists. 

The SWA’s Royal patron, HRH Princess Michael of Kent arrived at 11am on Wednesday 25th September to officially open the exhibition and present the awards. We are so grateful to HRH for her genuine interest in the Society, spending the time to see each and every piece of art work, chat, encourage and take photographs with the artists making our preview day a very special occasion indeed.  

The exhibition continued with a great number of visitors and received great reviews by some renowned art critics as well as great feedback from our visitors.  We were complimented for the contemporary style of hanging as well as the outstanding quality of the  diverse range of the exhibits and this was also reflected in our improved sales figures this year. Visitors enjoyed interesting demonstrations and sketching opportunity throughout the week of the exhibition.  

The SWA’s growing reputation as a modern and forward thinking society is attracting some outstanding artists some of whom become our future members. We take the  concept of the Open exhibition seriously and take pride in representing a fair share of our open submissions alongside the works by our talented members. We all  look forward to our 159th open exhibition and will endeavor to continue in our progressive fashion to put on an even greater exhibition in 2020. 

Soraya French PSWA

The review by Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark BlogSpot can be found here .