Tonight, the Mary Hare Charity Art Auction takes place at Dreweatts, Donnington Priory, Newbury.

They have a mixture of local and internationally known artists that have donated works of art and students work in the auction and it is hosted by Pippa Middleton.

If you wish to bid online you must register with Dreweatts first. To do this, go onto the Dreweatts website and create your account. www.dreweatts.com.

You can watch the event live online if you are registered. The Auction starts at 7.30.

We are looking forward to our first such event and hope that we get the support needed.

Below is just one of the amazing contributions included in the catalogue.

David Gray – Acclaimed Musician on Liverpool Art College Days & Painting Pembrokeshire

Globally lauded musician David Gray’s happiest childhood memories are from the time his parents moved the family from Manchester to a tiny two-up, two-down fisherman’s cottage in the fishing village of Solva, Pembrokeshire, to start their new clothing business and life in West Wales.  It is here that he developed the first of his many creative talents – that of landscape sketching and painting:

“I’ve always been drawn to landscape painting and growing up in Pembrokeshire surrounded by incredible scenery certainly played a part in that. I painted and sketched this view many, many times. It’s a view of a very distinctive rocky headland that juts out at the end of Newgale beach, a beautiful stretch of sand a few miles from Solva, the village in West Wales where I lived from 1976–1990. This version is one of a series I did in March/April 1988 while I was studying for a BA in Fine Arts at Liverpool Art College.  The series of charcoal sketches and oil studies of which this picture forms a part, went on to culminate in a couple of large-scale oils both of which I sold in the summer of 1989. I used the money from those sales to help fund buying microphones and sound equipment for my band at the time ‘Waiting for Deffo’. We were just starting to get serious about playing our own shows in Liverpool, Manchester and beyond.”

Should you be the successful bidder who secures this evocative landscape painting, you may like a little music to accompany your blissful drift off to Pembrokeshire … an EP of the acoustic version of David’s most recent album Gold In A Brass Age has just been released and can be found HERE.