Night Fishing - one of the paintings I’m offering through the Artist Support Pledge - you can view it here.

During the first crazy weeks of Lockdown, I began to notice something happening over on Instagram, a thing called The Artist Support Pledge. I curiously looked into it, noticing different artists that I followed were mentioning it and adding hashtags to their art, and wondering what it was all about.

Fellow artist Matthew Burrows dreamed up a venture during those early days of Corona Virus taking hold, which has become a creatively infused snowball that just keeps growing and growing! His idea was for artists to be able to continue to make an income during the Pandemic, when other usual avenues to make money may have suddenly become unavailable. The idea is that you offer pieces of art work for sale up to the value of £200 each, and when you sell £1000 worth of work, you commit to buying a piece (or pieces) of art from another artist(s) to the value of £200.

This spirit of support and generosity has quite literally soared.

The venture has blossomed worldwide, and has helped thousands of people to make an income from their creative businesses during what has been a very challenging and uncertain time. I decided to take part just a few weeks ago, and am over the moon to say I have reached my first target - the biggest problem now is trying to find something from the amazing array of art and craft that is up for sale to purchase - so much choice - but so much fun looking!

Matthew has successfully created what you might describe as a micro-economy. Many artists, myself included, are creating specific pieces of work especially for the pledge and it really is a wonderful opportunity to source some incredible art, craft and design work from top artists as well as undiscovered, talented newcomers.

Lagoon and The Summer House - two pieces of art I created for the Artist Support Pledge

The Pledge is hosted over on Instagram, and you can look up the artworks available by searching the following hashtags:

#artistsupportpledge

#artistsupportpledgeuk

#makerssupportpledge

I am sharing the work I’m creating for the pledge on my Instagram account, and also over on my Facebook page.