Three of my prints hanging

60 x 60 cm prints of "Your company is mine", "It never happened" and "If you won't release them, I will" hanging in an apartment in the Swedish town of Uppsala.

Wings finished

The third painting in the 'Fashion from another planet' series is complete:

"Wings"

Detail from "Wings"

Detail from "Wings"

Gallery owner feedback

I can imagine that there are not many artists who can get a gallery owner to study the artist's paintings for a while and give honest feedback. I'm in the lucky position of getting that feedback.

According to the gallery owner:

The Elegance and Power series are good paintings, and lots of the gallery owner's customers have seen and like them, but they are too large (100 x 100 cm) A better size would be 80 x 80 cm, which isn't so hard to find wall space for. The flat satin black backgrounds are a little too flat and unexciting, which in combination with the extreme photorealism and very thin paint make the paintings look like photographs. The gallery owner actually asked me several times on different occassions if they really were painted. It's a great compliment and at the same time rather saddening since I've spent so much time and effort to get that look. A tiny bit like Neil Armstrong must feel when hearing conspiracy theories that he never walked on the moon.

But the subject is 'spot on' apparently. The real-world, classy, high-fashion, elegant theme. Just more colour in the background and somehow make it more apparent that it's actually paint, not a photograph that's been printed on canvas and then painted over.

Updated site

I've re-done my site, with the aim of making it simple to use and easy for me to update. The pictures are from paintings done in 2011 and later, and are as large as I could make them. www.rychter.nu

How to keep in touch

There are lots of different ways to follow what I'm up to and each way is different. Have a read through these and see which one suits you best:

My blog (garethbillstrandrychter.blogspot.com) is the central place where I write about new things. Most of my channels point back to the blog.



You can simply check back at this blog whenever you feel like it. If you save garethbillstrandrychter.blogspot.com as a bookmark then you can come back every now and then to see what's new.


Or if you'd like to be a bit more effective, you can subscribe to the rss feed of the blog, then you'll see automatically when there's something new.

If you're on facebook then you can 'like' me there. I mostly post links back to my blog when I have something big to talk about. You can give feedback there (a simple thumbs up) and write comments without the pressure of writing on the actual blog (which seems to scare most people)

You can also follow me on twitter. There you'll find links back to the blog, but sometimes other thoughts and comments about my art which won't appear anywhere else. It isn't a good place to have a chat with me though since I don't spend a lot of time there.

If you use google plus then you can find me there too, and 'circle' me. Again, this is a place I put up links to my blog on, but sometimes I share other things from here too. I find this to be a place for more relaxed conversation and feedback, which is great.


I have an email list but unfortunately I'm not very disciplined about it and send them out far too infrequently.

I have a mobile phone so if you'd like to have a proper chat then just call me on 0046 706 183848 (That's 0706 391848 from a Swedish telephone)

If you like beer then we can go out and have a couple!

Charity calendars

This is where the rest of my 2012 calendars ended up - our local charity shop. They didn't seem at all thrilled to receive my little box and it's hard to see where they would put them on display. Who would want a 2012 calendar in the middle of march anyway? Lessons learned: focus on painting, print up calendars when there's a tangible demand for them, don't print so many, and give them away before March.

Fashion from another planet - Hooves finished

Working title is 'Hooves'

Detail from the dress at the top

Detail from the hooves