Dugald Stark

In October we travelled to Brittany staying near Dinan. I made several small oil sketches at various sites around Corseul where we stayed, at Mont St Michel, and Along the River Rance at Dinan, where I was particularly excited by the beautiful poplars on the banks with their autumnal tints.

Since returning I have been working on some paintings of the River Rance at Dinan as well as various commissioned paintings which needed seeing to.

We have created two new albums of paintings in the Works section – The New Paintings album shows the very latest paintings I have been working on, mostly seascapes of Trebarwith but also garden paintings of Cothele and Lanhydrock. The Wells Collection encompasses those paintings I completed of Wells in Somerset during the period when we lived in the town.

This website has generated lots of new interest in my paintings and it is proving to be a great resource to show interested purchasers and gallery owners as well. We have added a new category of Still Lifes on the works page. While Still Lifes do not make the main body of my work, I often enjoy the diversion and the challenge. Soon we will be updating the Recent Works as I would like to post up some of my very latest paintings ‘hot off the press’. Maybe I will be able to show some paintings as they happen and explain what is going through my mind after Stage One, Stage Two etc.

Please keep watching this space!

I have recently published three new giclée prints of Trebarwith Strand. Please have a look at these in the Prints section of the Works page. The Prints are a substantial size – the shortest side being at least 30 cm (12 ins).

They are available by post, rolled in a tube or mounted and wrapped from my studio. I have framed some up in a new cream and gold outer frame and they do look stunning.

Nine of Dugald’s most stunning landscapes and seascapes are now lodged at Obsidian Art, a gallery specializing in the best of Classic and Contemporary work in Stoke Mandeville village near Aylesbury. The summer show runs from 13th July until 13th August. Tel. 01296 612150

Thank you to all those who came to see us in Brill on June 25th. It was great to catch up with people again and to meet some new faces as well.

The show was a great success and it was well worth the effort involved for just a one day Exhibition. We look forward to repeating it some time soon.

Dugald will be mounting a one-day exhibition and sale of paintings at the Brill Memorial Hall, Brill, Buckinghamshire on Sunday 25th June.

He will be showing some classic countryside landscapes as well as a small selection of seascapes. You can preview all of the pictures online at the Works page.

The WordPress section of the website is now in a presentable, fully working state. For the Coppermine header include, a static HTML version of the header needs to be created. Fortunately, the same style sheet classes can be used selectively copied over to a new file.

To do:

• Content of Exhibiting, Contact, Links and Acknowledgements pages
• Update picture information with dimensions, prices etc. using custom fields
• Displaying of picture dimensions (custom field) in sidebar random image
• IE theme compatability? / php conditional message for IE users (can probably be placed in static front page)
• How to create a static front page

The new Coppermine-powered gallery is up and will be populated within the next two days. After it is running smoothly I will look into the CPG adaptor plugins available for WordPress.

I have (hopefully) settled on adopting the up and coming K2 theme. It is currently in a beta stage at the time of writing, but offers a lot already. It should be one of the most solid and advanced themes in existence.

I will make sure all the content is up and the basic site can be useable before customising the design and layout, though regarding gallery incorporation the two really go hand in hand.

Permalinks and pages sorted out.

To do:

• horizontal navigation menu in header.php
• install Include Page plugin to allow for static, non-looped pages
• basic content of other pages up