The Chair is a wonderful gallery and exhibiting my paintings there for a week in August 2024 was a positive and valuable experience. Val was really good at communicating with me via e-mail prior to my exhibition and I felt everything was very clearly laid out in advance.

The Chair is situated in a prime position in Hay on Wye and accessing the building to install my work was most straightforward, with parking right outside the gallery. Furthermore, there is a basement area to store tools etc, which was most helpful during my exhibition. The signage in the window, which was provided by Val, looked fabulous and the local shops and cafes were happy to display flyers advertising my exhibition and spread the word.

We were met by the delightful Jessie on Sunday morning and as well as providing us with the key to the gallery for the week, she remained on hand and supportive throughout our time at The Chair. My paintings can be heavy and one area of support that Jessie provided, was to identify which walls were slightly softer than the others, (as one would expect in an old building) so that I could work out the best positioning of my works.

During the installation of my paintings, we had several visitors who popped their heads around the door, and before we had officially opened, two paintings were sold, with one finding its new home in London and another heading off to Holland!

We opened around 10 am and stayed open until 5 pm with a steady stream of visitors each day. The Chair is positioned in the marketplace and next to a very popular ice cream parlour so lots of interest in the paintings in the window of the gallery from passers-by. (The Lebanese coffee ice cream is too die for)

We had a PV on Thursday evening although with hindsight, we might have done it earlier in the week when we first opened. We also changed the original time of 7.00 pm that we had planned for this event, to 5.30 pm as Hay on Wye is really quite quiet after this time. We had some lovely visitors and quite a jolly evening.

The gallery really is a lovely space with a handy loo upstairs and an area to wrap up paintings for buyers who want to take them there and then. A long trestle table provides a professional appearance to the space and a handy place to work and also to lay out postcards etc.

De-installing my works on the Sunday, was again straightforward and we made good all the walls with the touchup paint provided by Val. 

During the week I sold 4 large paintings, made lots of new contacts, received fantastic feedback, and had a poem written about one of my paintings by a young poet who was visiting Hay on Wye with his partner and young child. Furthermore, my Instagram account has grown considerably as so many new contacts were made during the week. 

I would wholeheartedly recommend having an exhibition at The Chair which is a fantastic space, with super support from both Val and Jessie both before and during the week and I hope to exhibit my own work there again at some point in the future!