Roman's first Art Exhibition

Hi jungle readers,

I am looking forward to write this down since a while now ...

Once upon a time I got asked by a friend of my dad - she is organising art exhibitions in a bavarian castle in Höchstätt - if I want to exhibit my miniature passion. And I said yes.

I had no idea what to expect, so I did not expect anything.
The outcome was very interesting and my goal was reached.
My goal with this was: Showing the passion of miniature painting to people who never heard about it.

Usually there are miniature art exhibits in form of shows, events, contests and such, but mainly only people who are already in the hobby of painting figures go there. These shows carry themselves, but do not spread further. I reached my goal.

I have barely done an exhibition of my work, so the first thing that came to my mind was this:

?

My mind was racing 
and the first thing I thought about was to decide to not do it alone. To make it an interesting event for visitors I asked my good friend Susanne, if she wants to join up and do a combo exhibition. Susanne is painting large, powerful and colorful canvas and I love her work. She said yes. We both decided to work on a concept soon. This was about a year ago. We should have planned earlier, but both never found the right time as everybody was busy with the every day struggle and hustle.

As the castle is really packed with exhibitions until 2019 already we were lucky to be in and plans had to be made quite early to set everything up (flyers, posters, concept, text, text for newspaper, etc.).

I still had no straight forward idea on what to exhibit:

Only figures?
(well I only have a certain number available from my projects as many are sent all around the world to collectors already. Thank you for your support in my work, passion and art!)

Or shall I present myself as a full artist in everything I do?
Drawings, photography, figures, paintings, writing even?

I was kind a lost and did prepare severl things. Not really prepared them, I did them:

- I printed my favourite photos I have made in high quality
- I found back to drawing

more?

btw some originals are for sale.

Well, this was fun, but I had no concept at all, still.

Susanne and I named our exhibition "cats and dogs", as we both are very different in many things in life, but also similar on some and do we do meet in painting spirit somehow. Hard to explain, this is a soul thing I guess.

For Susanne it was clear what to present: superlarge canvas paintings and I knew they would fill the exhibition room with great energies. Maybe this is why I wanted to do as many different things as possible to use also space in the venue? I felt that miniatures might be just standing in a small corner.

Well, one day Sanne said "Roman, stop showing your vacation photos and some drawings, you are a figure painting artist. A professional. Rocking it since 10 years. Now rock this exhibition!" ... I am not 100% sure if this were the right words, but this was the message that hit home.

Figures only it is.

My mind was racing again and I came to the conclusion to create prints of my personal favourite pieces I did in the past. Still having in mind to show it to people who might have never seen this before, so I skipped showing only Space Marines or Ogres with chopped of heads of maidens.

My plan was to have some twenty miniatures with me, also some of these shown on larger prints and also have some prints of models that I do not own anymore.


After some test prints of stuff and also some experiences made I charged in.

Plan. check. Execution. check.

frames

framing for days ...

My cats even were confused on what I did there all the time ...





It was not eay picking the photos of figures I wanted to be part of the exhibition. First I went with topics somehow, but my girlfriend gave me some good tips on rather choosing similar and interesting angles and close ups to be presented.

Well, I had them all together. Prepared small booklets on explanations how figure painting and basing works. These explanations were really simple and not a complex tutorial as I still had my audience in the back of my mind. I additionally wrote my artist portfolio and some more informations on figure painting to be fully prepared.

As I had a certain amount of walls to use in the venue Sanne forced me to plan a plan how to hang my photos instead of doing it spontaneously with superglue.

So I took photos with my mobile of the different groups to give them numbers and describtion later on.

Water Buffalo

Animal Kingdom

Warrior's eyes

Contrast

Usual suspects

Science Fiction

The funny ones

Fire, Pirat, Ninja Turtle!

Random

The Nightwatch

The day of the exhibition and the vernisage was closing in. Susanne and I hung our stuff some days before and I also placed some of my miniatures in the cabinets the castle was providing.

Susanne and I already realized on this day how cool this looks and how big the contrast between our both works is.

We even made it in Augsburg's local newspaper with an announcement.

The day of the vernisage 
We did not expect so many visitors and want to thank everyone who arrived, even through some rain showers. From far and near. Biggest thanks from my side goes to my dad and his wife for their amazing help in many things. Thanks to Bene who provided me with photos for this review.

Thanks to everyone who enjoyed the evening with us and special thanks to those who wrote a greeting in our guest book.

Impressions

We even made it to the newspaper again :D

This was actually what made me most proud. Additional of course that many people visited the exhibition. I hope this is like throwing a stone into a lake and the results and waves of it will be more awareness of "non-geek" people to see the beauty of miniature painting, but this is just a small start. To see the beauty they first have to encounter it ...


... and I also learned a lot of things:

- If you present figures, check for cabinets early.
The cabinets of the museum were great, but sadly too low, table height.

- If you think the light is good in the room, check how it is in the evening too. Not a big deal in the end as the museum was closing at 6 pm, but on the day of the vernisage - after some minutes of talk and fine music - the venue was quite dark and that is shitty if you want to look at tiny miniatures.

- I learned to answer interesting questions, for example, when an old lady was pointing at a bust of a fantasy shaman and asking me "Is this baroque or renaissance?" 

- It is good to have some experience in preparing and planning something like this. I had not. Now I got it and I know what I would do different. Also I know have plenty of stuff to do something like this again, yay.



I really enjoyed the vernisage 
and the many chats about miniatures I had with people who have never seen such a thing before. It was refreshing and I am happy that my goal was reached: spreading the word about miniature and figure art.  Beside we recieved such a great feedback during the one and a half month while the exhibition was running: Thank you! Everybody enjoyed the high contrast of program that we were offering.

It is always a pure joy to see Susanne's paintings. Somehow you can feel the energy that Sanne did put in them and often a spark of pure color joy jumps over to you. Thank you, Sanne!

While my mind was racing in preparations of the event I really enjoyed creating interesting stuff for the exhibition, for example a set of postcards:

If you want to get a set yourself and want to support me in my work,
feel free to check this link!

This is a little preview of a high quality, premium art print of my diorama "the Nightwatch".
A limited number of these will be available soon and exclusive, via Mr Lee's Miniatures.
And don't smoke, it kills. (Too lazy to edit the photo, sorry!)

As I was able to sell two of my framed artwork I did for the exhibition I decided to make the others available too. I soon have a list of photos online via Roman Lappat - painted miniature art.
Stay tuned!

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed the read.
I really had to share my experience on this event as it took quite a big part of my brain in the last couple of months.

Cheers and happy painting!
Roman

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