Home visits by artists

The background history

In 1963 Colin Ruffell and Fran Slade lived in Southsea, Hampshire while Colin was attending Portsmouth Art College to get his degree in Fine Art Painting and Design. They supplemented a meagre state grant by painting pictures and selling them. This was done by door to door canvassing in and around Portsmouth and Southsea. Colin used their old nanny pram to carry the pictures while Fran stayed home producing pictures and looking after their two very small children. When Colin graduated and started teaching in Bedford it continued to be necessary for them to sell paintings to top up his beginners salary. Within a year Colin was so successful that he gave up teaching and became a full time professional artist. The door to door method of direct selling was the key to this success.

An old art school friend, Richard Ackerman, joined Colin in Bedford and together they founded Spectrum Studios. Colin and Richard were soon joined by artist Colin Paynton. A year later they had teams of sales people criss-crossing the whole of southern England every weekend. During the week the artists would paint and frame. The three artists were invited to organise an art show in Rugby and then Banbury Art Festival. The swinging sixties in England were good for entrepreneurial artists. Richard, who lived in London, split from the other two to continue his own career, which eventually bought him international fame and fortune. Colin Paynton and Colin Ruffell were promoted by a major furniture manufacturer to supply paintings for room settings throughout the United Kingdom. They built up many trade customers and their paintings were displayed and sold in the best stores in the country.

The Ruffell family moved into a large rented farmhouse in Sussex, and Colin Paynton joined them there. Direct contact with customers was continued at Bayswater Road open air exhibition in London. Eventually in the early 1970's Colin Paynton moved, first to London and then to Wales. Colin Ruffell and Fran Slade carried on rearing their two children and selling their pictures wherever possible. They moved to Brighton and founded Buckingham Fine Art Ltd., which was a business selling original art to galleries and stores. They rented a large loft studio in the centre of Brighton. Buckingham Fine Art regularly displayed at trade fairs and trucked art all over the UK. The business grew and became an attractive package which was sold to a larger London based art dealership. A part of the negotiated price was that Colin was given a contract which undertook to sell all his paintings for him. When, two years later, the art dealership lost large amounts of capital in real estate speculation, and the business was wound up, Colin found himself back at square one.

The period under contract to Sion Essex Fine Art had enforced the artists to leave others to do the selling. Colin and Fran had missed the excitement of direct selling in customers homes, or at exhibitions. In marketing terminology, the contact with the end user had become a vital part of their raison d'être. Colin Ruffell and Fran Slade founded a new direct selling organisation in 1978 called Brighton Artists Workshop. This business still exists and has sold paintings and prints to thousands of collectors in nearby Sussex, Kent and Surrey.

A letter from an artist-gardener

By Fran Slade, from Fiveways Magazine, Brighton Festival, 1994

At the age of sixteen I had a choice between art and horticulture, my interview at the art college came first and I was offered a place immediately, so horticultural college was forgotten. Little did I know when I was studying painting and design at Hornsey Art College how important a garden would become in later life. Now the two interests complement each other and vie for my time.

The serendipity and spontaneity of nature in the garden inspires my painting, and design principles influence the choice of colour shape and texture in the garden.

There is a tradition of distinguished artist/gardeners like the French Impressionist Claude Monet, and Gertrude Jekyll who started as a painter and became a famous gardener. I am following along a well loved path, who knows where it will lead.

During the years that we have opened our home, studios and garden, many of our visitors have commented that they also find art and gardening wonderful partners. I look forward to meeting you again and comparing notes about plants and flowers, and showing you our latest collection of paintings and sculpture.

Fran Slade 1994.

An open letter

Colin says thanks to all of you in 1997

Many successful professional artists get early recognition and are protected from their customers by dealers or agents who filter out adverse criticism, disinterest and misunderstanding. Other successful painters get known for a style or image which traps them into a repetitive world of painting more and more of the same. Luckily I have been a painter for over thirty-five years without the disadvantage of either early success, or recognition for one particular trademark.

When I left Art College it was necessary to organise myself as a self contained artistic enterprise, making and selling my own work. It soon become apparent that there was a great deal to benefit from direct personal contact with the public. There was more than extra income, much more. The first hand interchange with customers involved a specially rewarding dialogue and feedback which has provided encouragement and inspiration for my work. Members of the interested public appreciate, and want to see, diversity, skill, creativity, fun, vision, quality and sincerity. However, they do not understand, or forgive, and are not fooled by, the esoteric complacency that tempts many students and art critics, and they reject it instinctively. By necessity I opened myself to these reactions and found them refreshing, challenging and productive.

My work has been influenced by years of interactive polishing, weathering and input from many thousands of human reactions. The people who have bought, and live with, my paintings, most of whom I have met face to face, have inspired and motivated a variety of picture forms, I have had to unlearn the self -indulgence of intellectual art education, and realise that Art can be enjoyable to look at, and do, and be functionally decorative. It does not have to be difficult, mystical or superficially intellectual.

One outstanding observation has been that many more people will dislike any one painting than like it. An artist who opens himself or herself to public criticism is continually reminded of that fact. I am used to it by now. It still hurts when I am scorned, misunderstood or ignored. But it feels absolutely wonderful when something that I have created is appreciated, whether you buy it or not. When it works it is because you the public have helped me to understand how to do it. Thank you.

Colin Ruffell. 1997.

Statements from catalogues

The following series of statements are taken from a 1997 catalogue of limited edition prints

"There must be a rational, biological and physical explanation for the fact that some shapes, textures, colours and rhythms, give greater aesthetic pleasure than others. Maybe cultural osmosis, or socio-economic pressures play a part. There is probably a sort of consensual "significant form" existing within visual experience, which is effective because, like theoretical explanations of music, it is congruent with neuronal workings in the subconscious mind." CR.

"Painting frees the picture-maker to experience wonderful depths of psychological pleasure. This is the ultimate artistic quest for liberation and spontaneity, like playing jazz or improvising a cadenza in classical music. I often retain a link with reality by reference to some subjective content in the paintings, perhaps floral forms, or faint hints at landscape, horizon or architecture." CR.

"The delight and humour in children's art has been the inspiration for this series of pictures. The innocent eye can perceive such simple and astonishing truths.

Naïve picture making, may look easy, whereas in fact it is very difficult to overcome the conditioning of a formal education in the visual experience, and the lure of sophisticated cleverness learned in adulthood.

When one of these pieces is "right", the child, that is within each of us, can recognise it straight away, while the adult psyche strives to deny it. It is sad that we let our adult selves control and spoil so much of our lives." CR.

"Trevor the Cat was a four week kitten when he came to live with us. He chose to stay for fourteen years. He often showed off in these poses during that time. He survived various adventures including a broken leg and months of confinement in an upturned tea-chest while it mended. Trevor was well fed, yet he terrorised local birds, slow-worms and seed potatoes, bringing them home as gifts. Probably he was just an ordinary cat, but he made us laugh and he inspired this series of paintings." CR.