Writing for Art UK

I've agreed to write some articles for Art UK (the Public Catalogue Foundation), which is a brilliant project funded by the Arts Council and dedicated to making available online all of the oil paintings which are in public collections in the UK. After the oil paintings, they may move on to works in other media:-  http://artuk.org/

The point of the project is to allow us, the British public, to get a look at what we all own! Some of the art is great, some is indifferent, but we should be able to see it all and decide for ourselves. Most of the artworks in public collections aren't on display, there simply isn't enough public wall-space in galleries and museums. Some institutions rotate their collections so different pictures are displayed at some point, but many others don't and very many works of art never see the light of day at all.

The Art UK website publishes artist's biographies which are all currently taken from The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, so I can't submit biographies of artists.

However they also publish artist stories, relating to artists who have works shown on the site. I've  so far submitted the story of Hazel King-Farlow, who has several paintings in Wakefield, Leeds and Manchester Art Galleries.

The story includes her sister, because Hazel King-Farlow is also Hazel McKinley and Hazel Guggenheim, the sister of Peggy Guggenheim, which makes the story more interesting for visitors to the website. As some of you, my gentle readers may know, Hazel was one of the 31 Women and I've researched her in some detail. My story should be available on the site in a few weeks, I'm told.

Some of Hazel's paintings are here: -  http://artuk.org/discover/artists/king-farlow-hazel-19031995/view_as/grid/search/artists:hazel-king-farlow-19031995/page/1

Personally I prefer some of Hazel's later work in gouache/watercolour which have a more surrealist streak and some are even humorous. But that's just me and I don't know if any of those are in any UK collection. So here's one anyway, which I probably shouldn't share... It's titled:

 'Gainsborough Painting Mrs Siddons in Tom Driberg's Sitting Room'.